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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



EDUCATION AND THE 
LARGER LIFE 



BY 

C. HANFORD HENDERSON 



"Can rules or tutors educate 
The semigod whom we await ? 
He must be musical, 
Tremulous, impressional, 
Alive to gentle influence 
Of landscape and of sky, 
And tender to the spirit-touch 
Of man's or maiden's eye : 
But to his native centre fast 
Shall into Future fuse the Past, 
And the world's flowing fates in his own 
mould recast." 




BOSTON AND NEW YOEK 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

d£bz Btoer^i&e pte?& Cambribge 

1902 



THF LI&KARY OF 

CONGRESS, 
Two Ooh» Heccivp 

APR. 4 1902 

COPVWeMT SNTRY 

CUSto-XXe wo. 
eOPY B. 



COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY C. HANFORD HENDERSON 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



Published April, igo2 



TO THE MEMORY OF 

THE WISEST OF ALL MY TEACHERS, AND 
THE BEST OF FRIENDS 

Jlp ;Ptot&er 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/educationlargerlOOhend 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Point of View 1 

II. The Social Purpose 30 

HE. The Source of Power 69 

TV. Organic Education 97 

V. Cause and Effect . 132 

VI. Childhood 167 

A 

VII. Youth 205 

VIII. Holidays 246 

IX. At the University . 281 

X. The Experimental Life 318 

XI. The Agents of the Social Purpose . . . 350 



EDUCATION AND LIFE 



CHAPTER I 

THE POINT OF VIEW 



It is the purpose of the present little volume to 
make a large inquiry, — the inquiry as to how edu- 
cation can be so applied in America as to best 
further the progress of civilization. The term 
civilization may be used to mean either the sum 
total of what man is doing in the way of material 
and intellectual achievement, or else the force under- 
lying this achievement, the inner soul of it. Edu- 
cation has a similar double meaning. It is the 
outward, visible result of an inner experience, or 
it is the movement of the inner experience itself. 
No complete view of life may lose sight of either 
meaning. They stand, indeed, in the relation of 
effect and cause. It is important, however, upon 
which meaning we place the emphasis. The outer 
aspect of civilization is history, the inner aspect is 
philosophy. The outer aspect of education is know- 
ledge, the inner aspect is development. In a prac- 
tical inquiry like the present, it is more helpful to 
deal with causes than with effects. We shall 



2 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

mean by civilization a force, a progressive idea 
expressing itself as social environment. We shall 
mean by education an inner experience, a practical 
process for the nutrition and growth of the civiliza- 
tion idea. 

This method of treatment is justified by events. 
The same universe apparently has always sur- 
rounded us, the same earth and air and fire and 
water. The stubborn facts of the world seem to 
remain pretty much the same. Cold and hunger 
and nakedness make their old-time demands upon 
human activity. But from these seemingly com- 
mon elements we build in different times and places 
such totally unlike worlds ! There must be some 
unique ingredient which we severally add to the 
stubborn facts to work the wonder of the individual 
life. This ingredient is the idea. It makes the 
difference between savagery and civilization. What 
men or nations make out of their material environ- 
ment depends solely upon the ideas which they 
bring to the adventure. Small ideas make a small, 
primitive, savage world. Great ideas make Greece 
or America. 

When we come more critically to look at our 
material facts, earth and air and fire and water, to 
ask the origin of our transforming ideas, to seek 
the relation between fact and idea, we face at once 
one of the oldest of world-riddles. The ideas them- 
selves come apparently from an experience of these 
very facts. But if the facts were truly stubborn, 
they could yield nothing beyond fixed ideas. To 



THE POINT OF VIEW 3 

make any advance in civilization possible, there 
must be some progressive interplay between fact 
and idea. Either Nature is less unalterable than 
we unreflectively thought her, or else the impres- 
sion she makes upon us is composite, a resultant 
of the present aspect, and the impressions induced 
by all previous aspects. In either case we are 
brought to look upon Nature, not as a fixed fact, 
but as a progressive environment. The important 
element is the idea, and the idea has the habit of 
growth ; fostered, or perhaps measured, by the en- 
larging of experience. 

Experience, in the larger sense of the word, is 
the only road to truth. Leonardo called experi- 
ence the mother of all science. Experience is 
sometimes obscure, but it is never more than seem- 
ingly contradictory. When we get to the bottom 
of any given experience, we find that it squares with 
the essential part of any other related experience. 
They both teach the same general truth, however 
different the special dress. It is this quality of 
experience, its inherent consistency, that has made 
our present civilization possible, As Browning 
put it, — 

" All »s love, yet all 'slaw." 

In the conduct of the individual and social life, 
it is a matter of the deepest concern to enlarge 
experience; to recognize the common element in 
human events ; to gather these elements into a dis- 
tinct philosophy, and finally to see to it that the 



4 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

philosophy flowers into performance. And this 
process is the process of all scientific progress. 
We have the students and observers and investi- 
gators, the world over, gathering together the un- 
disputed news of the universe. We have the gen- 
eralizes, the Darwins and Spencers and Maxwells 
and Kelvins, disentangling the abstract truth from 
the special fact. And then finally we have the 
prophets, the far-seeing people, who turn the gen- 
eral truth back again into a novel fact. When 
these prophets deal with material laws, they are 
inventors ; when they deal with spiritual laws, they 
are seers. It is the time-honored process of in- 
duction, followed by deduction, and all branches of 
human inquiry must pass through both stages be- 
fore they can rank as sciences. Auguste Comte 
affirmed the test of science to be the power of 
prediction. This presupposes an essential order 
and reasonableness in the universe. Were human 
experience not consistent, we should be in a sorry 
plight. In a world of caprice, in a world devoid of 
this saving uniformity, we should not even have 
sanity, much less civilization. The experience of 
to-day would conflict with and contradict the ex- 
perience of yesterday. The times would be most 
surely out of joint and the world-distemper prove 
complete. 

But happily we do not experience such confu- 
sion. The particular service of the great physical 
laws of the conservation of matter and the conser- 
vation of energy has been to exclude caprice from 
our view of Nature and to introduce order. 



THE POINT OF VIEW 5 

Education rests upon the same uniformity of ex- 
perience. It is well at the very outset to disabuse 
one's mind of any lurking belief that education is 
at all the haphazard sort of process which it is 
commonly conceived to be. One is not free to 
decide, offhand, between the different methods in 
school-keeping as advocated by rival masters. The 
matter may not be disposed of in this casual fash- 
ion. In a large sense there is no room for any play 
of mere opinion. Education is a definite process, 
quite as definite as the other sciences of experience. 
But it is not a primary science : it is an applica- 
tion. The direction of education, that is to say, 
the motif, is predetermined by the inner aspect of 
civilization, by philosophy, and this for practical 
ends is expressed in the concrete terms of a social 
purpose. When the philosophic idea has been 
clearly formulated, education has also been clearly 
formulated. Education is wrapped up in the 
philosophic idea quite as completely as the propo- 
sitions of geometry are wrapped up in the initial 
axioms. The method of education, that is to say, 
the art, is simply a rigid application of the princi- 
ple of cause and effect. 

It is my purpose, accordingly, to present educa- 
tion as a determinate, positive process, whose carry- 
ing out possesses the dignity of a moral duty. Let 
us have done, once for all, with the slippery notion 
that we may do this or that with our boys and 
girls, and that it is all right, provided we acted for 
their supposed good ; and let us lay hold of the far 
sturdier and truer notion that it is our supreme 



6 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

business to find out what is for their good, and that 
it is our supreme business not to be defeated in 
realizing that good. 

Looked at in this way, the problem requires 
that we shall first gather our knowledge of life into 
a distinct philosophic idea, an idea which sums up 
the most general and abstract of human truth ; 
that we shall then express this idea in the concrete, 
specific terms of a social purpose, and finally that 
education proper shall be regarded as a practical 
process for the carrying out of the social purpose. 
As a process, education is to be judged by its effi- 
ciency and may be criticised on no other ground. 
Neither may its failures be lightly palliated. The 
educational process does or does not produce men 
and women of the desired social type, and this is 
a matter of very unimpassioned fact. To be an 
educator is not, then, to be a man merely conversant 
with the customs and conventionalities of the 
schoolroom. It is to be a man with a defensible 
social creed. To be a practical educator, a teacher, 
is to add to this the power to carry such a social 
creed into effect. Unless we are courageous enough 
and skillful enough to work back to this firm 
ground, the philosophic idea, we can have no as- 
sured position on any question of human import, 
and surely nothing to say about education that will 
be at all worth saying. 

This matter of method in handling the furniture 
of one's own mind is of such grave importance that 
a word, in passing, may not be out of place. The 



THE POINT OF VIEW 7 

earlier years of life are spent for the most part in 
accumulating the material of thought, and there 
are souls who, through some fatal paralysis of the 
will, never get beyond this process of accretion. 
But to the earnest man there comes a divine mo- 
ment when new impulses are working in the heart, 
and he sets out to make use of his wealth. One 
who reaches this stage in the intellectual life must 
be appalled by the magnitude of the task before 
him. He finds perhaps in any single department 
of thought a fair degree of consistency. But when 
he compares these separate strands and attempts to 
weave them together into a beautiful and acceptable 
fabric of truth, he stands face to face with an im- 
possible task. The separate results are contradic- 
tory. I am disposed to believe that there are 
many who are living in this confusion of thought, 
who are possibly consistent along one line, but who 
are quite inconsistent when it comes to comparing 
these different results and trying to make them 
square with one another. The task of bringing 
one's ideas on separate matters into consistency 
with one another is so tremendous that few attempt 
it, and still fewer succeed in doing it. And yet 
this is the supreme task of the intellectual life, and 
one that we must all set about very earnestly, if the 
final outcome of our living is to be sane and whole- 
some. By some process, the habit of rigid self- 
analysis, the energy of untiring criticism, by some 
process adapted to one's temperament and carried 
to a conclusion, one must perform this initial vital 



8 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

act of the intellectual life, the finding of one's self, 
before one can find another or render the largest 
social service. Such an attempt to make one's 
ideas square with one another, one's esthetics and 
religion and pedagogy, one's science and politics 
and economics, only shows the entire hopelessness 
of the task so long as these ideas are reached on 
independent and inadequate grounds. It empha- 
sizes anew the surpassing value of the scientific 
method, the working out of a firm philosophic 
basis, and the subsequent translation of this into 
the special terms of daily thought and action. 

One may not attempt within the limits of a 
chapter, or even within a single volume, to work 
out anything so stupendous as the philosophic idea, 
but one may with all modesty indicate a path of 
approach, and report such content as one has, one's 
self, been led to appropriate. 

Philosophy is a search for reality, or, as more 
cautious people prefer to say, it is the search for a 
theory of reality. As a practical matter, it is an 
attempt to rationalize the world, a profound at- 
tempt to harmonize and explain human experience. 
Philosophy has as a study this peculiar advantage, 
that it requires no equipment beyond an average 
intelligence, and no material beyond the data of 
daily experience. It is, then, open to every one to 
philosophize. It is worth remarking that the un- 
dertaking is not at all novel. All schemes of life, 
however simple and unsophisticated they may ap- 
pear to be on the surface, are founded upon some 



THE POINT OF VIEW 9 

theory of reality. Whether we are conscious of it 
or not, we all philosophize after a fashion, and 
perhaps those most unwarrantably who would most 
strenuously deny that they philosophize at all. 
The man who tells you that bricks are bricks ; 
and trees, trees ; and houses, houses ; and that this 
so-called outer world of matter and motion exists 
quite apart from man, takes what he supposes 
to be the common-sense view of the matter, and 
rather pities the rest of the world as a set of lost 
dreamers. But, in point of fact, he has become 
himself the most thorough-going of theorizers, for 
he has at one bound passed quite beyond the limits 
of human experience into a region of pure specula- 
tion. Take man out of the world-drama, and there 
is no reporter left to acquaint us with what is hap- 
pening. We do not know a world divorced from 
human sensation, from sight and hearing and touch 
and taste and smell. Such a world is a pure ab- 
straction. It is true that my senses report what 
seems to be a three-dimensional outer world as 
distinct from me as are the emotions of an un- 
known hero. Events happen in that outer world 
which I seem powerless to control. Sometimes I 
am the victim of them ; sometimes the beneficiary. 
But after all is done and said, I find that whether 
the events were enacted outside of me or not, the 
only report of them which I can possibly have is 
internal, has come to me filtered through my own 
brain, and colored by my own past. 

But what are these seeming reports of the senses ? 



10 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

If they represent the total material of the world- 
drama, it is of the utmost importance to know 
their essence. In reality they are only changing 
states of consciousness on my own part. And no- 
tice also that if the drama be the reaction of an 
independently-existing, outer world upon my own 
organism, it is conditioned through and through 
by the state of the sense organs, and is therefore 
strictly individual. But the difficulty is that I can 
never know whether this is the case, whether this 
outer world has any independent existence, for I 
can lay hands on no testimony whatever beyond 
just this bare testimony of my own consciousness. 
So the question must remain forever unsolved. If 
I assume the existence of an independent outer 
world, as Kant and Spencer do, I pass into a realm 
of pure speculation, and one quite barren of prac- 
tical results, for the outer world, the cause of these 
sensations, must itself remain unknowable. It 
does no harm to label this hypothetical outer world, 
this abstraction of the philosophers. Kant calls it 
the Ding-an-sich, the " thing-in-itself," and Spen- 
cer robes it in appropriate mystery under the name 
of the Unknowable. But this labeling does no 
particular good. In either case, existent or non- 
existent, such a world, distinct from the thinking 
self, is pure speculation. The sensations only are 
experienced, and it is these which go to make up 
one's real world. The world of strict experience 
turns out to be a unit world, a panorama which 
unfolds itself in one's own consciousness. 



THE POINT OF VIEW 11 

For convenience we may call this unit concep- 
tion idealism. It is a view of the world which 
rests wholly upon every-day experience, and is 
quite devoid of theory. As an idealist, I use the 
common language of mankind. I speak of the 
inner and the outer world, of the things about me as 
if they had existence apart from myself, but this is 
only the projection of my thought into the realm 
of language. I create an outer world in order to 
express my inner experience. I speak, then, with 
my brother of opposite view, in a language which is 
equally sincere and definite to both of us. We use 
the same words to express the same facts. 

In one sense, of course, we are all idealists, 
whether we accept or decline the particular label, 
for philosophy must rest upon human experience, 
and this experience, as a very little analysis has 
just shown, has no existence outside of conscious- 
ness. It is a panorama unfolding itself in the world 
of thought. As an experienced fact, the universe 
reduces itself to a succession of states of conscious- 
ness, and this is the only reality that we can know 
and build upon. It is perfectly natural to spec- 
ulate about this tremendous world-drama, and to 
wonder what it would all turn out to be if one 
could see it from some extra-human, divine van- 
tage ground. The speculation is not without ad- 
vantage, for it gives a certain flexibility to thought. 
One sets up a number of apparent possibilities, 
and then examines as to how far they square with 
the observed facts. A source of error creeps in, 



12 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

however, just as soon as we become so enamored 
with any particular speculation that we mistake it 
for an observed fact of experience. All we ex- 
perience is consciousness, a unit stream of con- 
sciousness ; and consciousness is inexplicable. 

This speculative habit has long since divided 
the world into two sharply distinct modes of think- 
ing, monism and dualism. 

As the name implies, monism conceives man to 
be a unit. So far it is purely experiential and 
non-speculative. But it becomes speculative in its 
division into the two cults of psycho-monism and 
materialistic-monism. The first is what we have 
called idealism. It rests purely upon experience, 
and is the least daring and theoretical of all philo- 
sophic creeds. The idealist finds in his stream of 
consciousness a unit world of spirit, in which he 
recognizes not only himself but also the pageantry 
of human and non-human nature. The union of 
the self with other selves and Nature in one enfold- 
ing consciousness, of which he seems to share but a 
part, leads him to frame the conception of a cosmic 
consciousness, of a divine, pantheistic universe. 
Referring to the world-riddle with which we started 
out, it will be seen that the idealist absorbs the 
fact into the idea, and does not enter upon the 
difficult speculation of their separate life and inter- 
play. The materialist is equally monistic, but he 
passes completely over to speculation, since he 
absorbs the idea into the seemingly outer fact. 
He declares this to be the reality, and conscious- 



THE POINT OF VIEW 13 

ness a passing property of matter. The contro- 
versy between the two cults of monism is ancient 
and profound, and need not be entered upon here. 
It is, however, worth remarking that while ideal- 
ism does not pretend to explain consciousness, ma- 
terialism cannot explain matter. Idealism has 
the advantage of sticking closer to the experienced 
fact. 

Idealism being pure experience, and materialism 
pure speculation, dualism, in spite of the appar- 
ent contradiction, occupies the curious position 
of standing midway between the two. It is part 
experience and part speculation, — experience in 
accepting the idea, the intellectual and spiritual 
life, and speculation in accepting the seeming fact 
of the outer world as an altogether separate real- 
ity. Dualism gives us two distinct worlds, — one 
of idea or spirit, and one of outer fact or matter. 
Man is thus divided into separate parts, into spirit 
and body. The social purpose and the educational 
process which grow out of this dualistic conception 
of man share its speculative character and its di- 
lemmas. The particular difficulty appears when 
we attempt a theory of knowledge. So complete 
is the chasm between idea and fact that no bridge 
can be found between them. Neither can know 
the other. We have thus on our hands two worlds 
in place of the single one which we started out to 
explain. 

The only view of the nature of man which can 
form an unchallenged part of the philosophic idea 



14 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

is just this bare and simple belief that man is a 
unit, an integral consciousness, and beyond this, 
one may not pass. 

In thus limiting the world, as an experienced 
fact, to human consciousness, I seem at first sight 
to be robbing it of reality instead of conferring 
reality, for the intensity of consciousness varies. 
The world becomes more real and less real. It is 
as if existence itself ebbed and flowed, as if I were 
more awake and then less awake, living alternately 
under the influence of an intoxicant and an opiate. 
It is, of course, perfectly easy to declare this flux 
and flow a distemper of the individual mind, and 
to erect the outer world into a separate, unchange- 
able universe. But what you experience is not 
such a stable universe, with yourself left out, or 
even yourself as mere spectator. It is the flux 
and flow that you experience, the come and go, the 
projection and the fading. This is the life-drama, 
this is the world-passion, a stupendous panorama 
in which a part is distinct and clear-cut ; in focus, 
if you please to put it so ; and part is vague 
and shadowy, like the foreground in Corot's pic- 
tures. One is obliged to admit varying degrees of 
reality. 

Have you ever noticed, for example, in an apart- 
ment, filled with a great many ugly things, and a 
very few beautiful things, that the ugly things 
gradually lose their power to annoy, and the beauti- 
ful things have increased power to attract ? In the 
end we cease to see the ugly things and see only 



THE POINT OF VIEW 15 

the beautiful things. Do you remember, how in 
any great gallery of pictures the majority of can- 
vases fade away ; how on your fourth visit to the 
Pitti Palace or the Uffizi you saw only a dozen or so 
pictures, and how in the Louvre the Salon Carre 
overshadows all the acreage of canvas ? Thinking 
now of your circle of acquaintance, do you notice 
that the real people are those you believe in and 
admire, that your love goes out to the people whom 
you have idealized ? It is the same in history, with 
places and books. Christ is more real than Pilate ; 
Athens than Kome ; Cinderella than her wicked 
sisters. 

This unequal reality in the world-drama is 
simply due to its unequal power to stir the emo- 
tions. Consciousness is faint or vivid just in the 
measure that it is emotional. The ebb and flow 
of reality has its counterpart in the ebb and flow of 
feeling. 

Not only our consciousness of other persons, 
places, and things, but even the consciousness of 
self shares in these fluctuations. There is a come- 
and-go character about the experience that is very 
baffling. The realities of the young man are not 
the realities of the middle-aged man, and these in 
turn are different from those of old age. In youth, 
the most persistent realities are those aroused by 
one's companions. There are moments when our 
love and interest so concentrate themselves on the 
person of a comrade that for the time he becomes 
a more intense object of consciousness, a greater 



16 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

reality, than ourselves. In moments of danger and 
illness, of great sorrow or great joy, of any su- 
preme emotion indeed, the reality of self becomes 
secondary, and the greater reality is another. So 
in youth, the loss of a dear friend by death is to 
us a partial death for ourselves ; out of our own 
lives has gone an integral part of our own reality. 
Time assuages our grief by creating other realities, 
and so in part repairing the torn tissue of our 
emotions. Some of these fellow-voyagers alto- 
gether elude us, and when in later life their names 
are mentioned, we find them less familiar than the 
people in the last novel we have read. But to 
others, to the mother, to the beloved one, to the 
chosen comrade, we give the immortality of an 
ever-present reality. 

It is impossible to believe that this varying 
reality is a result of caprice, a mere whimsy of 
consciousness. There must be some indwelling 
principle which determines the grade of reality by 
the measure of its own presence. How is it that 
the world is such a strictly individual experience ? 
How is it that it is literally true that there are as 
many worlds as there are people in it ? We can 
best find an answer to these queries by probing 
the most persistent of all realities, the conscious- 
ness of self, and trying to find what principle it is 
which confers intense reality by its presence, and 
dissipates reality by its absence. That my love 
and interest should so concentrate themselves upon 
the idea of self, and give it this intense reality, is 



THE POINT OF VIEW 17 

not explained, I think, by what is commonly called 
self-interest ; does not rest upon what one may ac- 
quire, not even upon what one may accomplish. 
These represent a monotony of process which can- 
not stir the emotions unendingly. The persistent, 
emotional care for the self rests upon something 
deeper and more fundamental. It rests upon one's 
faith in one's self, upon the consciousness of an 
unfolding self, upon the assurance that the most 
real element in the self is an unquenchable aspira- 
tion for the things which are excellent and beauti- 
ful. So even to myself I seem more real and less 
real ; more real as I approach the goal of this high 
endeavor, less real as I recede from it. The ecstasy 
and the travail of the spirit represent the crest and 
the trough in the reality of life. If I apply the 
same test to other persons, and to things, I get the 
same result. Their power to stir the emotions, to 
heighten consciousness, and so to become the in- 
tense realities of the experienced moment depends 
upon their supposed measure of worth. The per- 
sistent, emotional care which the self feels for 
other selves rests upon just such grounds as these. 
Our love for them rests upon what they are, or 
what we believe they are, upon our ideal of them, 
and no love is founded upon any other ground 
than a belief in the essential excellence of its ob- 
ject. It is the same with things. Art is always 
representative and symbolic. It lacks the reality 
of living men and women, of actual Nature, but 
the same touchstone applies to both. It is the 



18 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

greater excellence which confers the greater re- 
ality. The marbles of Greece, the frescoes and 
canvases of Italy, are still the objects of loving 
reverence. They have been imitated in countless 
numbers. In hundreds of galleries men and women 
make their mute appeal in marble or on canvas, 
but hardly one touches the spirit. It is so much 
material, so much technique, so much time doubt- 
fully spent, but it is a slender reality. The marble 
of Greece has not only the poetry of form ; it has 
the deeper and more abiding loveliness of the in- 
dwelling spirit. So subtle is it that the eye alone 
cannot compass it. One would like to pass the 
hand reverently over the almost living limb and 
pulsing chest to fully apprehend it. The men of 
Michelangelo are the incarnation of penetrating, 
vital ideas. They are the channel through which 
he speaks. Beautiful and merciful, or stern and 
dreadful, they sweep over the whole scale of human 
emotion. This untiring quest of perfection is the 
most abiding impulse of the human spirit. Reality 
resides in this impulse towards perfection in the 
world of life ; in the promise of perfection in the 
world of things. 

And I propose now to go a step further, carry- 
ing over into the remote and less known the same 
principles which hold good in our experience of the 
near and better known. 

In moments of contemplation, we purify our 
ideals of all imperfectness. By constantly looking 
upon the goodness of the mother, we merge her 



THE POINT OF VIEW 19 

at last in our thought into the perfect mother, the 
Madonna. By dwelling persistently upon the ex- 
cellence and the beauty of the friend, we trans- 
figure him into Apollo. So in the heart is accom- 
plished the apotheosis of those whose nature cast 
about them in real life the aureole of assured good- 
ness. The images which we thus create out of the 
material of our own emotional experience accom- 
plish in our consciousness just those steps towards 
deeper goodness and wider knowledge and more 
radiant beauty which the unfolding self pictures as 
its own destiny. So the self, building, observe, out 
of its own inner experience, projects into Olympus a 
higher order of being than it has visibly experienced 
on the earth. Saints and heroes, angels and gods, 
become realities of experience in so much as they 
represent perfectly definite and rational steps in 
that process of becoming which the unfolding self 
is conscious of having entered upon. 

One more step remains in this projection of the 
greater self into the empyrean of the unseen good. 
The quest of perfection stretches out unendingly. 
It is the occasion of infinite hope. But one can in 
words at least pass to the last term in such a series. 
When, by a supreme effort, the consciousness pro- 
jects its image to the utmost limit of possible 
experience, and declares the realization of all good- 
ness, the attainment of all knowledge, the satisfac- 
tion of all aspiration, the enfolding of all beauty in 
a cosmic is, then the self, though it may not con- 
ceive him, at least breathes the name of God, the 



20 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

consciousness which includes the whole of the world- 
drama. 

When I ask myself what degrees of reality at- 
tach to these elements of consciousness, to the self, 
to the comrades, to the angels, to God, I can only 
answer that with the flux and flow of consciousness 
the reality changes. As we have seen, there are 
moments when the friend obscures the self and be- 
comes the more intense reality. There are moments 
when the angels overshadow both, and become more 
real than either. There are moments when the 
vague idea of God transcends all else, and fills the 
whole of consciousness. But there is no necessity, 
indeed, there is no merit, in arranging these reali- 
ties in anything like a graded scale. Their very 
soundness and integrity depend upon the unper- 
suaded play of consciousness. 

It is quite impossible to hold this ideal of an 
unfolding and progressive self, and to find the real- 
ity of the world in human consciousness unless we 
believe on the same grounds in a continuity of ex- 
istence, that is to say, in immortality. 

Such a belief has been the hope held out by 
religion for many centuries, and at times this hope 
has been sufficiently assured to be a vital element 
in the conduct of life. But, unhappily, the doc- 
trine of immortality has been for the most part 
associated with those religions which are either 
avowed or veiled forms of pessimism. In a world 
quite given over to the devil, the other world was 
offered by way of antithesis, and salvation was made 



THE POINT OF VIEW 21 

to consist in a process of escaping from one into 
the other. This is but one of the many regrettable 
instances in which a vital truth, expressed in a 
poetic and spiritual form, became a distinct untruth 
in literal and unspiritual hands. When the nine- 
teenth century arrived with her gift of science to the 
world-life, with her teaching of ascent and develop- 
ment in place of sin and deterioration, it became 
impossible to hold with any degree of assurance to 
the crude and shocking forms of pessimism which 
had been robbing the previous world-life of so 
much of its usefulness and delight. The recogni- 
tion that this world is both good and sweet has 
withdrawn men's attention from the too passionate 
contemplation of another life, save perhaps in those 
august moments when the presence of death has 
once more forced the question. The failure of the 
old, literal antithesis between the kingdom of this 
world and the kingdom of heaven carried down 
with it in many minds its attendant doctrine of 
immortality. It was, however, too precious a hope 
to be given over without a struggle. But, in the 
main, it has become an expectation which the 
modern world has fostered rather than insisted 
upon. Of recent years even this qualified expecta- 
tion has been growing fainter and fainter. Im- 
mortality has been made impersonal ; it has been 
transferred to the race, or finally, by many of the 
best and most earnest people, it has been given up 
altogether, and the prospect of annihilation has 
been bravely accepted. Perhaps only one who has 



22 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

passed through all these phases of thought and 
belief can appreciate their significance. I have 
sometimes fancied indeed that one condition of a 
genuine belief in immortality is a perfect willing- 
ness to disbelieve it. 

From a scientific point of view there seems no 
warrant whatever for a belief in immortality, and 
probably this lack of scientific support is responsi- 
ble for the fact that such a belief is now somewhat 
old-fashioned, and is regarded as conservative and 
reactionary. But just as one would exclude specu- 
lation unverified by experience from a theory of 
man, would one quite as rigidly exclude it from a 
theory of his destiny. The fact that science is per- 
fectly silent in regard to immortality is not in any 
way significant as to the belief, but only as to the 
province of science. Those of us who have been 
brought up in the camp of the scientists, and have 
preserved intact our loyalty and our affection, know 
full well that science has no word to say on destiny 
or first causes. Her work is limited solely to the 
study of appearances, to the bringing of these into 
harmonious relation, and to the intelligent presenta- 
tion of the world-drama as it is. There is no search 
for the underlying reality, and no attempt, however 
partial, at any explanation of the universe. 

It may well be that this statement will bring to 
mind the much-quoted doctrine of evolution and 
the fierce fight which centred about it not so many 
years ago. The friends of religion rated evolution 
as an explanation of the world, and the friends of 



THE POINT OF VIEW 23 

science made the same mistake. But the contro- 
versy turned out to be over a mere man of straw. 

Evolution, as a teaching of science, is a state- 
ment of the world-process, of how the present 
emerges from the past, and has no single word to 
offer by way of explanation. In this, it is precisely 
like any other of our natural laws, a chastened 
statement of human observation. So immortality, 
being outside the realm of present objective ex- 
perience, does not come within the province of 
science and may not be submitted to its judgments. 

The question of immortality belongs entirely to 
philosophy, to this searching scrutiny of the inner 
experience ; and as this comes to be more fully real- 
ized, a belief in immortality will naturally become 
once more prevalent. For philosophy, seeing in 
human consciousness the one undoubted reality, 
and in the impulse towards perfection the keenest 
manifestation of consciousness, must ascribe to this 
consciousness and to this impulse the same eternal 
quality that it ascribes to the great universe itself. 
That part of human experience which we call mat- 
ter and motion could as well pass into nothingness 
as the medium, the consciousness, in which they 
have their being. Here again, if we choose to go 
beyond experience, and once more speculate, we 
may ascribe to matter and motion, that is, to the 
great outer world of which these are the sole con- 
tent, a reality independent of man, and may declare 
this eternal, and man passing. But I find no sober, 
empirical ground for such a belief. 



24 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

It may not be offered as an argument, perhaps, 
but it is worth remarking that the quest of perfec- 
tion which seems to us the most abiding impulse of 
the human spirit, the keenest manifestation of con- 
sciousness, would be quite meaningless, save as a 
progressive, unlimited, timeless process. 

These remarks upon the content of the philo- 
sophic idea are offered simply as considerations by 
the way, and not at all as a systematic explora- 
tion of the field. That would require, as I have 
said, not only a whole volume, but many volumes. 
Yet out of these considerations there do emerge 
what seem to me the essential elements of an ade- 
quate philosophic and social creed, and consequently 
the framework of a practical educational process. 

I would sum up these elements as six in number, 
and for a practical reason, which will appear later, 
I would divide them into two groups of three ele- 
ments each. The first group, having to do with 
the present moment, may be called immediate, and 
the second group, having to do with the larger mo- 
ment of humanity, may be called ultimate. This 
division is purely for convenience of treatment, and 
does not signify any time difference between the 
groups ; for, in a large sense, philosophy does not 
deal with past, and present, and future, with 
" this " world and the " next " world, but recog- 
nizes in the present moment the one reality of ex- 
perience, the one chalice into which is concentrated 
the whole wine of life. 

The immediate group would contain a belief in 



THE POINT OF VIEW 25 

the unity of man ; a belief that Nature, or the outer 
world, is an interpretation and counterpart of the 
inner life ; and finally, a belief that the process of 
life is esthetic, is an operation for deepening the 
reality of the world by increasing its excellence and 
beauty. 

The ultimate group would include the more tran- 
scendental content, a belief in immortality ; a be- 
lief in the existence of more evolved beings, whom 
we may call angels and gods ; and finally a belief 
in the spiritual existence of the cosmic conscious- 
ness, the immanent God. 

These beliefs, with the implications which attend 
them, make up for me the content of the philo- 
sophic idea. As a man desiring to live the higher 
life of consistency and goodness, I must translate 
these elements into a distinct social purpose, and I 
must realize this social purpose through an efficient 
educational process. 

These beliefs are not novel. But I can readily 
understand that there will be many who will not 
agree to them as the true content of the philosophic 
idea. In particular, this conception of immortality 
and of angels and gods may seem mediaeval and 
metaphorical. While I do not aspire to cast a drag- 
net for the whole body of educators, even supposing 
that I could spin so great a web, neither do I want 
to part company with the earnest men and women 
of the profession save at some vital divergence of 
belief and consequently at some necessary diver- 
gence of practice. It is in this spirit of comrade- 



26 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

ship that I feel bound to indicate how far we might 
profitably travel together, and just where we must 
meet an inevitable parting of the ways. 

It seems to me, then, that any one who accepts 
the immediate group of elements, or even the first 
of them, a thorough-going belief in the unity of 
man, might be interested to follow the system of 
education which it is the purpose of this book to 
unfold. As we have seen, this major belief, in 
human unity, is held in common by such opposite 
camps as those of the materialists and idealists. 
Though apparently the most unlike of thinkers, 
they both attempt to stick very close to the facts 
of human experience, and consequently they reach 
many of the same conclusions. It is only when 
the materialist passes over into the mists of specu- 
lation that the idealist loses sight of him. It is 
also worth remarking that the third element, the 
belief that the process of life is esthetic, though 
reached by quite a different and independent path, 
is in reality only another statement of the observed 
world-process, as formulated by the law of evolu- 
tion. In the old Stadt-Kirche at Weimar, on the 
tomb of Herder, one may read these thrilling words : 
"Licht, Liebe, Leben." It is the cry of an im- 
passioned poet, but it voices as well the deepest 
message of both philosophy and science. The sec- 
ond element, the view of Nature, is perhaps more 
debatable ground. Yet, even here, the antagonism 
is less than at first sight appears. To the ideal- 
ist, Nature is the interpretation and projection 



THE POINT OF VIEW 27 

of the inner life, and varies as it varies. To the 
believer in the unknowable, Nature is the more po- 
tent and the eternal reality, and through environ- 
ment determines the inner life of the human 
spirit. I would not fill up with obscurity the tre- 
mendous chasm between these two views, but it is 
nevertheless true that the difference is one of em- 
phasis. The idealist puts it on human conscious- 
ness ; the naturalist, on the external world. But 
they agree in recognizing the intimate connection 
and dependence of the two. 

There is, however, a veritable parting of the 
ways between myself and those, if such there be, 
who do not hold at least a thorough-going belief in 
the unity of man. I cannot hope to interest them, 
and I cannot ask for their sympathy. The system 
of education to be developed in the following pages 
as a consistent, logical process of human culture, 
stands or falls with the doctrine of the unity of 
man. It would be quite meaningless from any 
genuinely dualistic conception of man. It can only 
have value to those who believe in man as a unit 
organism. 

I might add, parenthetically, that the believers 
in genuine dualism are a diminishing company. 
I do not mean that the ritual of dualism is less in 
evidence than formerly. I mean only that the sub- 
stance is being dissolved out of it. One sees on all 
sides religious sects whose creeds assert the most 
uncompromising dualism, the deepest pessimism, 
given over by a happy inconsistency to the prac- 



28 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

tice and inculcation of a most cheerful monistic 
optimism. My meaning will be clear when I call at- 
tention to the gymnasiums, manual training classes, 
country clubs, Saturday half-holidays, improved 
tenements, diet kitchens, public baths, libraries, 
concerts, studios, laboratories, lectures, which have 
replaced the old and more logical asceticism, and 
now form the wise and approved activities of the 
religious. It is far better to profess a crude pessi- 
mistic dualism and practice a sweet optimistic 
monism than the reverse, but one cannot help wish- 
ing that our current creeds might at least keep pace 
with the very best of our current practice. It is 
an old complaint that practice falls behind creed. 
It may seem a novel and highly optimistic prayer 
that creed might keep pace with practice. 

As a practical operation, however, I conceive 
that education gains an immense power from the 
acceptance of our more transcendental beliefs in 
immortality and in an infinite series of angels and 
gods. These beliefs are not open, I think, to the 
charge of fostering what Huxley has so cleverly 
named " other-world lin ess " by turning one's atten- 
tion from the present to the future. The search 
for excellence and beauty is the search for pre- 
sent qualities ; and culture, which is the study and 
pursuit of perfection, is by nothing so much dis- 
tinguished from smaller ends and purposes as by 
its insistence upon the incomparable value of the 
present moment. Unless the present moment is 
rich and full, an infinity of such moments would 



THE POINT OF VIEW 29 

be intolerable. But a sincere and vital belief in 
immortality has the immense merit of eliminating 
the element of time and giving one a sense of infinite 
leisure and of unfailing wealth. Furthermore, it 
turns the attention increasingly towards those things 
which are eternal, towards excellence and beauty 
and love and happiness, and it does make the tran- 
sient and expedient things, the shop-keeping and 
advertising, the speculating and overreaching, the 
counterfeits and insincerities, the things that lack 
the eternal element, seem all of them insignificant 
and unworthy. 

In quite the same way a belief in a more evolved 
order of beings, in angels and gods, brings with it 
a very real help in our own endeavor. It is in- 
expressibly comforting to feel that the excellence 
and beauty towards which we are ourselves toiling 
are even now the dear possessions of other sentient 
beings, gracious comrades in the same infinite spiral 
of being. Those who come of an old and honor- 
able family must feel the welcome pressure of good 
traditions, the noblesse oblige of a true aristocracy. 
So, it seems to me, that to feel one's self a part of 
the cosmic consciousness, a member of that greater 
company of excellence, of angels and gods, is to 
bring into one's own life the welcome pressure of 
an unfailing expectation, the noblesse oblige of a 
universe. 



CHAPTER II 
THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 

Human experience generalized is in reality what 
one means by the philosophic idea. It is the aim 
of the present chapter to translate this idea into 
the exact vocabulary of a social purpose. It can 
best be accomplished by developing each element of 
the philosophic idea into its own special contribu- 
tion to the programme of daily life. The inquiry is 
purely practical. 

It were well to ask, first of all, what we mean by 
a belief in the unity of man. 

This belief is at once the most concrete and the 
most abstract of truth. It is the creed of monism 
and is consequently the anchorage of such other- 
wise dissimilar thinkers as materialists and ideal- 
ists. 

From the point of view of materialism, the unity 
of man is an undeniable concrete fact. Man is, in 
the last analysis, only a bit of highly organized 
matter, the most complex and the most unstable of 
all Nature's chemical compounds. His thoughts 
and emotions are the subtle accompaniment of the 
rapid changes taking place in this sensitive and 
unstable organism. Human life is a part of such 



THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 31 

reaction in much the same way that an electric cur- 
rent is a part of the reaction taking place in a 
voltaic cell. The electric current is quite as es- 
sential, quite as unavoidable a part of the reaction, 
as are the spent acid and the spent metal. So 
humanity, it is argued, is quite as essential a part 
of the human reaction as are the carbon dioxide 
and water vapor and other spent products of the 
bodily economy. This was summed up in that early 
and much-quoted maxim of materialism, that the 
brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile. 

The analogy to the voltaic cell may be carried a 
step further. In the voltaic cell there comes a time 
when all the acid is spent, and all the metal is dis- 
solved, and then there is no more current, and the 
cell becomes a bit of quiescent earth. In the life of 
the human organism, they say, it is the same. There 
comes a time when the vital forces are spent, and 
the organs no longer perform their office, and then, 
there is no more human life, and the spent body is 
committed to the grave, ashes to ashes, dust to 
dust, It is impossible from this point of view to 
believe in immortality. It is true that the electric 
current is not lost. It is true that the human cur- 
rent is not lost. Both are spent in doing work, and 
the doctrine of the conservation of energy prohibits 
the belief that this work can ever be destroyed. 
Even the bodily heat of the multitudinous children 
of men has its effect upon the climate, and so upon 
the destiny of the physical earth. But both the 
human and the electric currents are dissipated, and 



32 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

individually cease to be. In the same way a belief 
in higher orders of beings could have no interest 
and significance. It would be a mere idle specu- 
lation, for with the passing moment of humanity 
such beings could stand in no vital relation. 

Such a materialistic view as this, the view that 
makes man a unit, because it makes him all mat- 
ter, seems the easiest to slip into, and particularly 
easy for those who approach the intellectual life 
along the pathway of the natural sciences. How- 
ever thoroughly one may repudiate such a view for 
one's self, one must still feel a genuine respect for 
any view which has attracted so many honest and 
noble minds. One of the most lovable of these, 
Clifford, has, if I remember rightly, this tragic 
record on his tomb : " I was, I loved, I am not." 
Haeckel, who might from his earnestness be called 
the apostle of human mortality, expressly says, 
" The belief in the immortality of the human soul 
is a dogma which is in hopeless contradiction with 
the most solid empirical truths of modern science." 

But other spirits, equally beautiful and equally 
lovable, men like Agassiz and Clerk-Maxwell, have 
stood for a more complete view. And nothing, in- 
deed, seems to me quite so interesting in all the 
drift of modern scientific thought as the tendency 
which I detect, or think that I detect, in our most 
representative men of science to accept with all 
readiness the orderly and magnificent report of 
the world of phenomena which science is every day 
making, and at the same time to recognize that for 



THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 33 

its inner reality and explanation one must turn to 
the experience of the intellectual life. This move- 
ment toward the humanizing and spiritualizing of 
the world, this deepening of the religious senti- 
ment, is, I think, as characteristic of the opening 
of the twentieth century as the wave of somewhat 
crude agnosticism which swept over the latter 
half of the nineteenth was characteristic of that 
period. I do not wish in any way to discredit the 
cleansing value of this wave, for I can easily believe 
that it was necessary to prepare the way for that 
sweeter and more reverent cult of the modern world, 
the worship of the Spirit. 

Quite of an opposite turn of mind to the ma- 
terialist stands the idealist. To him the unity of 
man is an undeniable, abstract truth. Conscious- 
ness is the one reality, the medium in which the 
world-play is carried out. Human experience is 
the universe, and the events of life are essentially 
the changing states of human consciousness. It 
is quite as impossible for the idealist as for the 
materialist to bisect human experience, and call 
one part matter, and the other part mind, and to 
think of them as separable and independent reali- 
ties. The whole experience of the moment, as 
idealists like to put it, is the reality, and must be 
accepted in its entirety. Such an experience, when 
viewed at short range, shows neither matter nor 
spirit, nor any other antithesis. It shows the even 
flow of a unit consciousness. 

It is impossible, then, to have evil experience 



34: EDUCATION AND LIFE 

with the body and to have health in the mind, or 
evil experience with the mind and keep the body 
in health. It is impossible to be one thing and at 
the same moment its opposite, to be awkward and 
partial and weak and unbeautiful on one side of 
your nature, and clever and total and strong and 
beautiful on another side. One may not have one 
set of morals for business or politics, and another 
set for the home life. One may not say yes and 
no, be hot and cold, look forward and backward, 
all at the same moment. One may not have unde- 
veloped organs and deficient senses and faulty cir- 
culation and stunted, brain centres, and still be the 
source of a radiant complete life. Our own experi- 
ence of life makes impossible the view that man's 
bodily and mental and spiritual powers are simply 
the members of a triple alliance which in times of 
exceptional good-will may work together for a com- 
mon purpose, but at other times may secretly plot 
and plan against one another and against the com- 
mon good. It makes necessary the view that man 
must be considered as a whole, that his well-being 
means the well-being of his body, the well-being of 
his mind, the well-being of his spirit. 

This, very briefly, is what we mean by the unity 
of man, and this is precisely what we experience 
in life ; not bodies, not minds, not souls, but men, 
whole or partial as the case may be, but neverthe- 
less men. It is what we experience in our imme- 
diate, contemporary life, and it is what we find 
recorded in history. The partition of man into 



THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 35 

dual or triple parts is merely verbal. The reality 
is the unit man. 

This is a matter to be strongly emphasized, this 
unity of man, for it is the very heart of the philo- 
sophic idea. Furthermore, as we shall see during 
the progress of the chapter, the attempt to trans- 
late this doctrine into a practical social programme 
leads to very far-reaching and radical results. It 
does this, because when combined with the belief 
that the world process is esthetic, it sets up a 
totally new standard, and one that is altogether in- 
exorable and imperative. 

The interplay between the world of human con- 
sciousness and the so-called outer world is what is 
commonly called a theory of Nature. Modern 
methods of estimating time and age lay increasing 
stress upon the quality of the years, and have less 
to say about the mere number of years that go to 
make up a human life. It is not how many years 
you have been about it, but what experience you 
have pressed into it. Jesus, in one third of a cen- 
tury, drained the cup of earth life ; Methuselah, 
with his traditional ten centuries, appears merely 
to have tasted it. A glance into history and bio- 
graphy, a glance at the men and women now around 
us, discloses the immense difference in the quality 
of life, in the content of a month, of a year. In 
some, the moment is almost overfreighted with 
thought and emotion and action, with experience 
in its richest and fullest terms, a casket of brilliant 
and many-colored gems ; in others, the moment is 



36 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

so thin and sliudderingly bare, such a pallid blot 
of grayness against a desert of gray nothingness, 
that souls alive with the red wine of life hardly, 
or at best with something of a missionary effort, 
discern their anaemic brother. Nor need one go 
so far afield. One has only to look within one's 
own life, to the times when one has been alive 
and the times when one has been less alive, to see 
this very real difference in the days. There come 
to all of us periods of passage from less life to 
more life, and the consciousness of this larger pos- 
session, of this awakening, is one of the keenest 
joys that a man may taste. Now what I want to 
point out is that this experience of life, taken at 
its flood, all this thought, all this emotion, all this 
action, is absolutely dependent upon Nature, upon 
the so-called outer world. Without it we should 
have nothing to concern ourselves with, no symbols 
for our thought, no objects for our affection, no 
theatre for our activity. The peasant deals with 
the simple and specific facts of Nature. The phi- 
losopher deals with precisely the same Nature, only 
in a more comprehensive and generalized fashion. 
The most abstract of our ideas rests ultimately 
upon the most concrete of natural facts. This is 
all perfectly obvious, but it is quite worth recalling ; 
for those who have got well on into the intellectual 
life are prone to talk as if a few more stairs climbed 
and they would be passing into an empyrean quite 
above and beyond anything so limited as the pa- 
geantry of Nature. In reality they would be vanish- 



THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 37 

ing into a void by the side of which the day before 
the first day of creation would be a whirlpool of 
events. The dependence of the inner life upon the 
outer world both for its content and its imagery 
is, absolute and unlimited. 

Although so obvious, it is still worth while to fol- 
low this thought into a very important realm of the 
human drama, into the realm of language. We are 
all familiar with Max Miiller's dictum that there 
is no language without thought and no thought 
without language. One will perhaps recall collec- 
tions of words which failed to express any thought, 
such, for example, as the attempted " fine writing " 
of those who have not yet anything to say, or the 
succession of sounds made by those 4 devastators 
of the day,' lecturers and preachers who have felt 
obliged to occupy a certain period of time; but 
these and all similar cases may, I think, be properly 
dismissed in the same way that Matthew Arnold 
dismissed them, by classing them as noise rather 
than as language. It is less obvious perhaps when 
we come to the second half of the doctrine, that 
there is no thought without language ; for in the 
progress of life one does meet with indications of 
experience which belong to the region of the inex- 
pressible. But even here, the inexpressibility im- 
plies not so much a failure of language as a failure 
to grasp the experience so definitely as to be able 
to put it into words. So true is it that thought and 
language run parallel courses in the mind that the 
study of comparative philology enables us to dis- 



38 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

cern whether a race is retrogressive or progressive, 
just as the displacement of the lines in the spectrum 
of a given star tells us whether the star is receding 
from the earth or approaching it. We may say 
then that just as human consciousness is the one 
experienced reality, so the expression of this reality 
is to be found in language. Logically speaking we 
have only three classes of words, nouns and verbs 
and connectives. For convenience of treatment, 
the grammars name eight or nine, but the pronoun 
and exclamation (standing for the noun) and the 
adjective and article (as modifying its meaning) 
may properly be included in the one class, just as 
adverb and verb express a single thought, and 
preposition and conjunction make the necessary 
cement. My purpose in going into this detail is to 
point out that language reduces to the same three 
fundamentals that one discovers in the physical 
world. The entire content of this physical world 
resolves itself on the last analysis into matter and 
motion and relation, three elements which have 
their exact counterpart in nouns and verbs and 
connectives. In the physical world, we never ex- 
perience these elements separately. It is matter in 
motion in relation. So in the mind, we have no 
complete thought which does not include noun and 
verb, with some implied relation, some of the 
mathematic of existence. 

The richness of the intellectual life is measured 
in part by the fullness of its vocabulary. The work- 
ingman is said to get along with two or three 



THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 39 

hundred words, while Shakespeare used fifteen thou- 
sand, and intermediate minds fall between the two 
fortunes. It is also to be noticed that literary style, 
the measure of success in language, depends upon the 
vividness of the physical images which it creates in 
the mind. The poet of Nature must bring up dis- 
tinct pictures. The poet of emotion must present 
situations which stir the emotions. The reporter of 
events must not tell us that they happened: he 
must let us see them happening. The most sacred, 
the most stirring, the most stupendous words of the 
language fail of effect if they are not so used as to 
be rich in this sensuous imagery. 

This parallelism of consciousness and Nature is 
the common fact which both materialism and ideal- 
ism are forever called upon to face. The one holds 
consciousness to be the symbolism of Nature, the 
reflection of Nature, the reaction which Nature 
sets up in the human soul. The other simply says 
that consciousness is the thing which we experience, 
and that it is wiser therefore to take consciousness 
as the primal fact, and to regard Nature as the 
symbol, the reflection, the interpretation of the 
human spirit. 

Contrary to popular opinion, it is the first, or 
realistic, view which presents the greater difficulties. 
We may quote the much-quoted objection of all 
the philosophers of idealism that every event in 
Nature is a manifestation in time, in space, and 
in causation, and then call attention to the fact 
that time has no physical analogue, that space has 



40 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

no objective existence, that causation is an intel- 
lectual perception of relationship. Even putting 
aside the impossibility of any conception of physi- 
cal space, we are thrown back on an equal difficulty 
in trying to image it ; for either it proceeds infi- 
nitely in all directions, which is unthinkable, or 
else it is bounded, which is equally unthinkable, for 
a boundary makes necessary the thought of an 
equally definite something on the other side of the 
bound. One meets with no greater success in deal- 
ing with the ultimates of physical science, with mat- 
ter and motion. When all is done and said, matter 
remains explainable only in terms of human expe- 
rience. Every attempt ends in metaphysics. From 
the atoms of Lucretius to the vortex-whirls of Lord 
Kelvin, we find metaphysical units in place of 
physical ones. 

But whether we view Nature objectively or sub- 
jectively we must admit the ceaseless, all-important 
interplay between man and Nature, and must make 
Nature an integral, ever-present element of the 
social purpose. 

The third element in the philosophic idea, the 
belief that the world-process is esthetic, involves 
no antagonism of view between the most divergent 
lines of philosophy. Even pessimism and opti- 
mism take common ground. The only confusion is 
in the time element. Pessimism makes life a pro- 
cess of escape from a world of present evil into the 
brightness of a world to come. Optimism makes 
life a present passing into the larger good. It is 



THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 41 

interesting to note that in ignorant and literal 
minds, Christianity, as suggested in the last chapter, 
is a pronounced form of pessimism, and as an his- 
toric creed must even be so classed, while the best 
practice is the very opposite. 

In spite of this convergence of belief, it is quite 
worth while to approach the matter by two oppo- 
site paths. Let us begin with the subjective. 
The one abiding impulse of the human spirit is 
towards perfection, and the study and pursuit of 
perfection is culture. It may seem a hard saying 
in the face of what the human spirit has done, in 
the face of its architecture, of its mills and shops 
and houses, in the face of its competitions and in- 
stitutions, most of all in the face of its men and 
women and children, that is to say of present 
society, of the human spirit in its aggregate expres- 
sion. It may seem a hard saying that all this 
rawness and hideousness has for its abiding im- 
pulse the study and pursuit of perfection. But it 
is a true saying. The failure is due to a failure to 
see in what perfection consists. It is due to a false 
point of view. The man who chooses to go to the 
devil does so because he fancies that the devil has 
more substantial good to offer him than has his own 
misshapen conception of deity. This is the story 
of temptation everywhere. One can imagine an 
insane person's doing the imperfect thing con- 
sciously and on purpose, traveling south in the 
avowed hope of reaching the north, and otherwise 
defeating his own ends by contradictory means, 



42 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

But one cannot imagine a sane person's doing any- 
such thing. When one builds a house, the pur- 
pose is protection and comfort, and perfection would 
be the largest possible measure of protection and 
comfort. One may build a leaky roof and incon- 
venient rooms ; one may make inadequate provisions 
for light and air and heat ; one may offend the sense 
of beauty at each and every turn. These things 
are constantly done through carelessness and mean- 
ness; but given a certain amount of labor and 
material, the only defensible grounds for its expend- 
iture would be the getting of the utmost possible 
good out of it. 

And similarly with the less obvious operations, 
from the smallest to the greatest, up to the very 
greatest of all, to life itself. The only sane pur- 
pose in life is the quest of perfection. It is im- 
possible to deliberately choose a smaller good in 
preference to a larger good, for choice means the 
selection of the thing most to be desired. One 
may mistake the values. One may choose as the 
greater good what is really the smaller good, but 
one may not do it consciously. The glory of the 
imperfect, about which one hears so much, must 
not be misunderstood. The glorious thing in the 
imperfect is just its measure of perfection, either 
actual or potential, and nothing more. To believe 
anything else is, I think, to look through a glass 
very darkly. The glory that redeems every life, 
however mean and squalid, is the glory of the per- 
fect, and this is what the veriest drunkards and 



THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 43 

harlots are seeking. In moments of clearer vision, 
moments of remorse, the standards become purified 
and rationalized, and the soul accuses itself of 
having followed a false light, of knowingly, deliber- 
ately choosing the smaller good. And this confu- 
sion in the time element, — for such it is, — this 
shifting of the point of view of one moment to the 
action of a totally different moment has given us 
the unpsychological doctrine of deliberate sin, and 
all the hopelessness and impossibility of the doc- 
trines which group themselves around it. But 
passing back from the moment of reflection and 
remorse to the moment of action, one cannot help 
seeing how utterly inadequate is such an explana- 
tion. There is deliberate, conscious choice, but 
from the very nature of our mental processes, it 
must be the choice of that which seems to us at the 
moment the thing most to be desired. And this 
conclusion cannot be escaped unless we are willing to 
subscribe to the simpler and more extreme case, and 
believe that a man in our own northern hemisphere 
may consciously set out for the equator, and as per- 
sistently travel towards the Great Bear. As soon 
as one realizes that this conscious choice of evil is 
psychologically impossible, one realizes also that the 
moral law is absolutely compelling. One may not 
see the right, and while still seeing it, do the wrong. 
It is impossible. One may see the right, and then 
afterwards do the wrong, like the man who saw his 
image in the glass, and forthwith looked away and 
forgot what manner of man he was. 



44 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

One may choose between a present pleasure and 
a future benefit, and choose very badly from our 
own point of view; but in order that the choice 
may be made in favor of the present, the pleasure 
must assume dimensions quite beyond those of the 
declined benefit. 

This view does appear at first sight distinctly 
appalling. The universal charity and toleration 
which it makes necessary seem to undermine that 
wholesome public condemnation from which so 
much good is always expected to come. But some- 
how the good does not arrive in any very large mea- 
sure, and the gentler method of dealing with evil- 
doers, the method of pity and enlightenment rather 
than of condemnation, has been recommended by 
no less a teacher than Jesus. 

This belief that the moral law is absolutely com- 
pelling, that a man may not look upon the right 
and do the wrong, reduces the really significant 
world-problems to one, — to the problem of educa- 
tion. If knowledge and virtue be one ; if ignorance 
and vice be one, then surely the thing which a 
man would desire very earnestly for himself and 
desire for others must be that perfect knowledge 
which would lead to the perfect life. And so I 
must believe that among thoughtful people the 
pursuit of culture, that is, the study of perfection, 
must be the conscious purpose in life; and that 
among careless people the pursuit of perfection 
must still be the real purpose in life, however it 
may be obscured by a failure to see in what perfec- 



THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 45 

tion consists, and by a failure to adapt the means 
to the ends. The impulse towards perfection is a 
blind impulse on the part of the great mass of man- 
kind. The mission of the social teacher is to make 
this impulse conscious, and to make it intelligent. 
That power which makes for righteousness, that is, 
for excellence and beauty, is in reality the onrush 
of a world-process which is essentially esthetic. 

This brings us very naturally to a consideration 
of that other more objective path of approach which 
science offers under the name of evolution. Were 
we quite to ignore the philosophical argument in- 
dicated in the first chapter and the psychological 
argument outlined in this, and limit ourselves 
strictly to the study of organic nature, we should 
still observe that however unconscious the actors 
in the struggle for life, the victory would still be 
with the more perfect organism. The process of 
natural selection goes on working quite regardless 
of the consciousness or unconsciousness of its ma- 
terial. The unfit, the deficient, the vicious, are 
eliminated by the operation of a process more in- 
exorable than the sweep of human law ; for unfitness 
and deficiency and vice are only general terms for 
those qualities and actions which lead to unfavor- 
able, that is, to destructive, results. Our own hu- 
man, conscious morality is simply the lesson we have 
learned from the experience of life. Things are 
right or wrong, not through the indwelling of some 
abstract, magician principle which might have been 
otherwise had God so willed, but for the simpler 



46 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

and more divine reason that they do or do not lead 
to the furtherance of human welfare and happi- 
ness. When this is recognized, and men lead the 
glad life of an intelligent morality, they have the 
great reward which has ever been the portion of 
those nations which have cultivated intelligence 
and loved righteousness. It has been the same, 
back through all the unconscious stages of the 
world-life, back through unreflecting man and the 
brutes and the plants. Before man came, and 
the principle of human usage intervened to change 
the course of evolution by introducing a new stan- 
dard of fitness, before man came, each inch of 
ground was occupied by that plant which under 
the given conditions of soil and sunshine, tempera- 
ture and moisture, could produce the sturdiest and 
most vigorous offspring. Before man came, the 
battle of the brutes gave the victory, not to the 
strongest, not to the swiftest, but to the wisest and 
most cunning. And when man came, and entered 
into possession of a heritage his by right of greater 
intelligence and nobler worth, beast and plant 
came under the sway of a new standard of selec- 
tion, — the standard of human usableness. Mam- 
moth and mastodon, lion and tiger, serpent and 
scorpion, have passed, or are passing. In their 
stead one finds camel and horse, cattle and sheep, 
poultry and game. In the fields and gardens, one 
finds the same transformation, the same giving over 
of the world to the things of use and beauty. In 
the human world, even before consciousness came, 



THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 47 

the world-process moved on resistlessly towards per- 
fection. In spite of local lapses, in spite of retro- 
grade eruptions of force, we see the steady elimina- 
tion of evil, the steady growth of good. At the 
beginning of the nineteenth century, human mon- 
sters were no longer possible. With the progress 
of that century, the world came into consciousness 
of its own destiny, — of the destiny of develop- 
ment. And now, at the opening of the twentieth 
century, with whom does potential victory rest? 
Surely a man with his eyes even half open must 
answer that it rests with those nations who are the 
most wholesome, the most intelligent, the most 
moral, — in a word, with those nations the most 
enamored of perfection. And in the nations them- 
selves, victory rests with those individuals who are 
strongest with the strength of the spirit. The tide 
of human life rises the highest in the men and 
women who are most highly evolved, who possess 
the greatest human wealth of strength and beauty 
and accomplishment and love, who most perfectly 
adapt means to ends, who select life-giving, con- 
serving ends, the men and women who have the 
power of benignant personality. We have a deca- 
dent class. It is quite true. But the mark of 
death rests upon it. We may pity, but we need 
feel no alarm. The red wine of life is in no danger 
of turning sour, for it is held in another chalice. 
Two things there are that make straight for degen- 
eration : one is idleness, and the other is disregard 
of the social welfare. But happily both of these 



48 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

qualities are self-corrective, for they are both self- 
destructive. Idleness leads to illness, and social 
disregard means the withdrawal of that sympathy 
and good-will on the part of one's fellows, without 
which one cannot enjoy radiant, buoyant life. 

As an objective, scientific, unconscious opera- 
tion, evolution still declares, with philosophy and 
psychology, that the world-process is esthetic. 

The social purpose which flows out of these three 
elements of the philosophic idea, the unity of man, 
the interplay between man and Nature, the esthetic 
process of the world-life, is so plain that he who 
runs may read. The social purpose is a humanized 
world, composed of men and women and children, 
sound and accomplished and beautiful in body; 
intelligent and sympathetic in mind ; reverent in 
spirit ; living in an environment rich in the largest 
elements of use and beauty ; and occupying them- 
selves with the persistent study and pursuit of per- 
fection. In a word, the social purpose is human 
wealth. There is but one interest in life, and that 
is the human interest. All that makes for human 
wealth, for the sound, strong, beautiful, accom- 
plished organism ; for an enlarged and rationalized 
conception of Nature ; for the unfolding and per- 
fecting of the human spirit, — all this is light ; 
and all that makes against human wealth, however 
sanctioned by law and custom, platitudes and pre- 
judice, — all this is darkness. 

Education is simply the practical process by 
which we realize this social purpose and acquire 



THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 49 

human wealth. It is a process, therefore, which is 
very far from being limited to the schoolroom. 
It covers rather the entire twenty-four hours, the 
entire year, the entire lifetime. The term edu- 
cation will be used in this comprehensive sense 
throughout the following inquiry. While it will 
be assumed that no man is wholly virtuous who is 
imperfect, it will also be assumed with equal insist- 
ence that an educational process is moral which 
creates in the individual the largest attainable 
measure of perfection. It follows, of course, that 
the process is immoral if it falls below the best. 
It is worth remarking that most of our present 
schemes of education are immoral. 

Human wealth may be pursued in two ways : 
either for quality, as when we try to produce a 
highly endowed, superior individual ; or for quan- 
tity, as when we try by commonplace and partial 
methods to make the masses a trifle more human. 
One is the method of aristocracy ; the other, of 
elementary democracy. Both methods are poor, 
for neither satisfies the social purpose. The social 
purpose is frankly avaricious of the utmost pos- 
sible amount of good fortune ; and this divine 
greed can only be satisfied when, as a society, we 
deliberately and consciously resolve to make the 
very best out of every individual, to make him 
highly endowed, to make him superior even to the 
full measure of his capacity. A nation which fails 
to do this fails to realize the social purpose, and 
must still be accounted barbarous. It has not yet 



50 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

come into conscious harmony with the great esthetic 
world-process. Looking over the earth to-day one 
sees a goodly and an increasing company of de- 
lightful, cultivated, social, human people ; but one 
does not see a single nation that is other than bar- 
barous. Even America, the greatest of them all, 
is not yet social, has not yet thrown herself unre- 
servedly into the pursuit of human wealth. We 
make a fetish of the public school with its cheap 
information and shop-keeping accomplishments, 
but we have not yet conceived of human life as a 
moral and esthetic revelation of the universe, nor 
of education as a practical process of entering into 
this tremendous possession. Even the bounty of 
Nature, the indisputable heritage of the collective 
nation, her fields and forests, oil-wells and coal- 
mines, mineral deposits and stone quarries, water- 
power and roadways, — all this is handed over to 
the crude ministration of profit, and the majority 
of America's children are reduced to the position 
of wage-takers and servants, with little time or 
strength or heart for the carrying out of the true 
social purpose, the pursuit of the higher human 
wealth. The bulk of our laws have to do with 
merchandise and real estate. The few that con- 
cern themselves with man are mainly prohibitive, 
the things that he may not do. The realization of 
the social purpose demands a more positive ideal 
than this. It does not mean restrictions, restraints, 
the subordination of one class of citizens to an- 
other. It means liberation, freedom of motion, 



THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 51 

choice of occupation, enlargement of opportunity, 
the absence of all restraint save that imposed by 
the equal good of the neighbor and the perfecting 
of the self. 

The present is a time of transition. The newer 
ideal of the social purpose is stirring the hearts of 
men. The old abuses are being called in question. 
The larger life and the larger human wealth are 
being canvassed as possibilities of realization. It 
is a time peculiarly full of hope and promise. One 
may not deceive one's self into thinking that the 
individual life can be idealized while the national 
life remains unsocial, for it is a matter of social 
complicity. 

In its broadest sense the ideal social type is a 
perfect human life, and every activity of one's 
neighbor or of one's self which makes against this 
ideal perfection must be counted as anti-social. 

The unity of man makes it impossible to reach 
perfection in any one aspect without covering all 
aspects. The social purpose is only realized by 
the idealizing and perfecting of all that concerns 
daily human living. As a practical problem, it has 
to do with a man's occupation, with his food, with 
his dress, with his dwelling, with his health, with 
his organic power, with his family, with his friends, 
with his pleasures, with his thoughts, with his emo- 
tions, — in a word, with every element that touches 
or makes up his life. The same unity which char- 
acterizes our view of his physiological constitution 
must characterize our view of him as an individual 



52 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

in action. All elements in the daily life which 
make against human wealth are rigidly excluded, 
and there is no compromise permissible. Such a 
view closes many of the conventional doors. One 
may do nothing which makes one less of a man, less 
alive, less clever, less honest, less happy, less beau- 
tiful, — nothing, in fact, which makes one less com- 
plete and less universal. One may participate in 
no activity which involves the degradation of one's 
self or the degradation of another. The feeling 
that life is something very sacred and very beau- 
tiful, and that it may not lightly be squandered, 
would lead one to scrutinize even those occupa- 
tions which society has stamped with approval. 

Every performance may be looked at from two 
distinct points of view : that of the thing done and 
that of the doer. These are the two terms neces- 
sary to bring the thing about. We may call the 
one point of view the non-human, and the other 
the human. It seldom happens that the outlook 
in any performance is strictly one or the other. It 
usually involves a little of both. An industrial 
performance from the standpoint of the market is 
strictly non-human, for it has to do only with the 
thing produced. An educational performance, from 
the standpoint of the philosopher, is strictly human, 
for it has to do solely with the agent, the doer. 
But industrial performances are more and more 
coming under the eye of the social philosopher, 
and are introducing the human element. In the 
same way educational performances are coming 



THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 53 

into touch with the market, and are submitting to 
the non-human standards of measurement. Both 
industry and education may pass quite over to the 
opposite extreme. In the hands of Tolstoy and 
William Morris work becomes a human perform- 
ance, whose value depends upon its effect on the 
worker, upon the joy and development it brings 
him, and secondarily upon the thing produced. 
So, in the hands of the commercialists, education 
ceases to be a human process, and is evaluated 
solely by the utility of what is or may be produced 
by the workers. 

In the matter of the professions even, the appli- 
cation of this human yardstick brings much into 
question. One finds many cases of sweet, disin- 
terested service, but one also finds the hungry 
profit-taker with scant hold on the vision of per- 
fection, and a keen appetite for pottage. The 
ostensible purpose of the professional life is to 
render social service, and this requires that the ser- 
vice itself be true, and the server himself be sound. 
If you accept the unity of man, if you believe in 
perfection as a worthy end of human endeavor, then 
no service is possible which harms your body, which 
occupies your mind with petty, ignoble matters, 
which makes your heart less genuine and sympa- 
thetic. A perversion or stunting of any side of 
your nature is an inroad upon the whole. Only 
that service is possible for you and good for the 
community which leaves you at the end a truer, 
sounder, more wholesome man. 



54 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

As Emerson somewhere says, who cares what 
you do, if you spoil yourself in the doing. 

Most of the calls to a false social service have as 
their bait the involved profit. I have heard that 
for everything we do, we have two reasons ; one 
is a good reason, and the other is the real reason. 
Take away the fees and how many sound healthy 
minds would be willing to spend their days in an 
atmosphere of preventable disease and uncleanness ; 
how many men with good red blood in their veins 
would be willing to waste their lives in stores and 
counting-rooms ; how many lawyers would squabble 
over doubtful rights ; how many clergymen would 
preach polite sermons to people who do not listen ; 
how many teachers would consent to teach under 
conditions which they know to be harmful to both 
themselves and the children ? But the fees do not 
make it right so to waste a life. 

If we turn to the productive occupations, to 
farming, mining, and manufacturing, the impossi- 
bilities are quite as numerous. The home farm is 
still beautiful, where it is not made a drudgery by 
poverty, or a mere commercial venture by greed. 
But the factory farms of the South and West are not 
beautiful. Humanly speaking, they are hideous. 
The great harvests are gathered by men who can 
have no love for the soil and no interest in the 
bread which comes off of it, for the conditions pre- 
clude love and interest. The whole operation is for 
profit, and this not for the workers themselves, but 
for the men and women who exploit their labor. 



THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 55 

The majority of people have a very strong feeling 
against fortunes made in the liquor traffic, because 
the results to both bodies and minds are so ob- 
viously unsocial ; but the same sensitiveness does 
not extend to the taking of large dividends and 
profits from industries and enterprises which are 
gathered none the less surely at the cost of human 
degradation and poverty of spirit and hopelessness. 
Modern society still carries out its private purposes 
at the expense of human life. The trouble with 
these multitudinous evil-doers is that they have no 
restraining sense of a high social purpose more ab- 
solute than any mere individual convenience. To 
these deaths you and I consent, and we consent 
quite as thoroughly to the unspeakable degrada- 
tion of our large cities, to the death of innocence, 
of health, of happiness, of hope, of all that makes 
human life better than the life of the beasts, we 
consent to all this, when we choose as our occupation 
any operation which gathers its profits from the 
forced labor of other people, which exploits human 
life. We are false to our belief in the unity of 
man and his impulse towards perfection when we 
accept any social ideal which involves physical, in- 
tellectual, emotional harm to any member of the 
social group, which withholds a wholesome life of 
body and mind and heart from the lowest and 
meanest of them all. 

This brief criticism of occupation is radical, pos- 
sibly severe, but it is unavoidable as a logical con- 
clusion from the philosophic idea, and furthermore 



56 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

it should be borne in mind that it is no criticism on 
the human actors themselves. They are all striving 
practically after a perfection such as they see. The 
manufacturer who works for low wages and large 
output and high profits does so because these things 
represent to him the perfection of industrial opera- 
tions. The trade's union, striking for higher wages 
and ignoring the squalor and hideousness of life in 
a factory town, does so because for it high wages 
constitute the perfection of successful work. The 
merchant, buying his wares in the cheapest market 
and selling them in the dearest, believes that profit 
constitutes the perfection in commerce. The specu- 
lator, watching social movements and needs, and 
appropriating to his private purse values uncon- 
sciously created by society and belonging to it, 
does so because this sort of cleverness constitutes 
for him perfection in business. It must be remem- 
bered in dealing with these enemies of the true 
social purpose, that the same impulse towards per- 
fection stirs in them as in the men of clearer in- 
sight. The way out of the difficulty is not the way 
of denunciation, much less the way of violence, but 
the way of enlightenment, — " Come, let us reason 
together." It is also to be remembered that while 
some classes suffer more severely than others under 
the present imperfect social order, it is nevertheless 
true that all suffer. The burden falls the heaviest 
upon the working class, the proletariat ; but as this 
class is by all odds numerically the strongest, its 
misfortunes are due to its own ignorance much 



THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 57 

more than to the deliberate selfishness of those more 
fortunately placed. In a country of almost uni- 
versal male suffrage, the path of the true social 
purpose is open, just as soon as the majority is suf- 
ficiently enlightened to desire it. 

It is impossible, in speaking of society as it now 
exists, to avoid the use of the word " class." No 
amount of political oratory can conceal the fact 
that even in the Great Kepublic we have as dis- 
tinct social classes as exist under the oldest mon- 
archies. That is to say, we have not achieved 
democracy. Within a class there is ample room 
for every human interest and occupation, but be- 
tween classes there can never be anything but 
essential antagonism. The social purpose, there- 
fore, which flows out of the philosophic idea can 
only be realized by the suppression of class dis- 
tinctions, and the glad 'passage of society into a 
single class bent on the perfecting of every indi- 
vidual, and on the enrichment of Nature, that is, 
the environment. Furthermore, this social pur- 
pose is international, and when realized would 
mean the federation of the nations. For the per- 
fecting of the individual life and the beautifying 
of the individual environment we want the whole 
world to minister. For the growth of the human 
spirit, we want a sympathy that shall stop at no 
political boundaries, but shall be as broad as the 
world itself. The absence of class and national 
boundaries between the children of men is a most 
important element in the social purpose, and it 



58 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

must be clearly emphasized because the educa- 
tional process by which that purpose is to be 
realized must always be touched by this spirit of 
the universal brotherhood. 

Each century states its Utopia. Though the 
dream were never realized, it were still worth the 
dreaming, for no vision of a fairer earth leaves 
man quite where it found him. But it is notice- 
able, and the occasion of boundless hope, that 
succeeding Utopias come nearer to the actual world, 
and spring increasingly out of human experience. 
No Utopia can be imposed from without. It must 
grow up within the human heart itself, and not in 
one heart alone, but in the very heart of society. 
It is therefore the result of education, of that pro- 
cess which brings a man out of the limited world 
of the primitive savage instincts into the larger 
world of the enlightened emotions. It is impossi- 
ble to overestimate the importance of founding our 
system of education upon a true social purpose. 
The outer life is but the expression of the inner 
spirit. Education is an ideal adventure. If it 
can be made true to the social purpose, then the 
social purpose is realized ; for the obstacles to the 
realization of that purpose are not found in any 
outer events, but solely in current public opinion. 

But one must have patience. To make over our 
educational system into conformity with the social 
ideal is not the work of a day, but of a generation. 
To redeem society is the work of succeeding gen- 
erations. Meanwhile what may a man do, upon 



THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 59 

whose heart this ideal of a social purpose has laid 
firm hold ? The answer is simple : he must be true 
to his philosophy. He may do anything which 
makes for the health of the body, anything which 
means fresh, pure air ; wholesome food and drink ; 
suitable dress ; adequate exercise ; manly work of 
hand and eye and muscle, — anything which means 
increased health and sensitiveness and power, in- 
creased beauty and usableness and delight. He 
may do anything which makes for the health of the 
mind, anything which means sanity, alertness, relia- 
bility, anything which means increased flexibility 
and order and strength. He may do anything 
which makes for the health of the spirit, anything 
which gives it greater play and truthfulness and 
power, anything which adds to the reverent delight 
of life. But as this separation of man into the 
members of a triple alliance is a mere convenience 
of speech, one is bound by the requirements of the 
higher life to consider as equally sacred the health 
of the body and the mind and the spirit. To 
satisfy the law, one must do more than simply 
omit to profane the health of the person, one must 
work for its positive betterment. 

It is equally imperative that one may consent to 
no mean and shabby environment. One must sur- 
round one's self with wholesomeness and beauty. 
The parallelism between consciousness and Nature 
makes this insistence upon convenience of arrange- 
ment and respect for form and color more than a 
mere matter of taste. It makes it a matter of 



60 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

moral obligation. A man's surroundings are not 
accidental. They are a part of himself, and 
must likewise be chastened and purified. An 
ugly room, badly lighted, poorly ventilated, inade- 
quately heated, must be regarded as morally repre- 
hensible, whether provided for one's self or for 
somebody else. It is the projection of an evil 
thought, and, entering into consciousness, lowers 
the level* of human life. This view of Nature 
makes architecture and the fine arts, music and 
the drama, landscape gardening and home-build- 
ing, roadways and bridges, an expression of the 
social life of a community, and therefore open to 
that more comprehensive esthetic judgment which 
includes morality as well as questions of form and 
color and sound. Nor is it sufficient merely to 
wish for beautiful things ; one must know them 
and attain them. This requirement, also, must 
find adequate expression in the educational pro- 
cess. 

Furthermore, one must remember that in the 
world-process the stress is laid upon the best. To at- 
tain less than the best that is possible is unesthetic, 
that is, immoral. Life is not an affair for any 
modesty of purpose. That is a shabby bit of lazi- 
ness. Life is an adventure quite worthy of the 
superlative. To have the strongest and most beau- 
tiful body, the most intelligent and most accom- 
plished mind, the most reverent and most sympa- 
thetic spirit ; to wear the most pleasing clothes ; 
to inhabit the most beautiful house ; to work in 



THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 61 

the most charming garden ; to produce the most 
admirable wares ; to establish with others the most 
ideal relations, —this is the formula for daily life 
into which the philosophic idea literally translates 
itself. To carry out this formula is to attain hap- 
piness for the self and also to add to the happiness 
of every other soul whom such a life touches. It 
is a good motto : " Le meilleur c'est assez bon pour 
moiP 

It is this attempt to translate the philosophic 
idea into a practical daily programme for the in- 
dividual man which throws out so many currently 
accepted occupations as quite unworthy of the 
human spirit. It does so because the point of view 
is changed, changed from the thing done to the 
men and women who do it. The ministry looks to 
the saving of other souls, not to the all-round, 
wholesome life of the minister; the law looks to 
the so-called sacred rights of property, not to the 
sacred, human rights of the lawyer; education 
looks to the process, not to the sturdy, manly 
life of the teacher ; farming looks to bread and 
meat, not to the soundness of the farmer ; manu- 
facturing has its eye solely on the output and the 
profit, not on the delight of the worker or the 
salvation of the profit-taker ; and, finally, com- 
merce, more shameless than the rest, has pro- 
claimed with the utmost frankness that business is 
business, and that its votaries are not in it for 
their health, but for profit. 

There might be something noble in this sacri- 



62 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

fice of the self if it made a veritable contribu- 
tion to the social good, but that is impossible. 
The social good is not an abstract happiness, a 
fund of unexperienced emotion. It is the sum of 
individual good fortune. Furthermore, a group 
willing to accept the sacrifice of one of its mem- 
bers has by that very act made good fortune im- 
possible, for it has robbed itself of reverence and 
sympathy. It is true that the opposite doctrine is 
commonly preached. Resignation, renunciation, 
sacrifice, contentment, the whole catalogue of as- 
cetic abdications are urged by those who have never 
caught sight of the splendor of life ; but it is a 
coward doctrine, and has in it no element of the 
divine. 

The problem of humanizing life, for that is what 
translating the philosophic idea into a social pur- 
pose means, is difficult in this, that it involves a 
turning one's back upon the conventional solutions. 
But the problem is easy when this is once done. 
The obstacles to a complete, sturdy, wholesome life 
are not material; they are mental. They are to 
be found in those false ideas which dominate life 
like so many post-hypnotic suggestions. The con- 
flict is to be fought out in the spirit. It is there 
that victories are lost and won. 

I fancy that any one looking upon the Europe 
of the Middle Ages would have said that the most 
persistent fact was the feudal strongholds which 
were then the seats of power. But the ideas which 
consented to that order of things failed. To-day 



THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 63 

those strongholds are in ruins. At the present mo- 
ment, the most persistent fact in the outer world 
is apparently the large cities, and those who have 
builded them look to their indefinite expansion. 
But these cities rest upon the idea of trade, upon 
the supremacy of the market, not upon the idea of 
human perfectibility. When the ideas which con- 
sent to this order of things fail, then will be seen 
the passing of the city. As the need for a whole- 
some, complete life makes itself felt in the human 
spirit, the idea strengthens and the obstacles fade. 
I say this, not as an abstract proposition, but as 
the plain experience of a multitude of earnest lives. 
One must work with one's hands, one must work 
with one's mind, one must keep a hot fire in the 
heart, — red blood, swift thought, warm heart, — 
these are the content of the social purpose. It is 
organic wealth, and of such wealth there is enough 
for all men. 

Habit is a great tyrant. The most of us are so 
far removed from the all-round life of bodily, men- 
tal, and emotional activity, that it presents itself to 
the imagination as a distinct hardship. Yet a life 
of diversified work is rewarded by greater power 
all along the line. The perspective of things gets 
straightened out. One will not slay cattle and 
sheep, and, red-handed, prepare them for one's own 
table ; one will not arrange a many course dinner, 
and then sit down and eat it ; one will not build 
and over-furnish a great house, and then tax one's 
self personally with its care ; one will not elaborate 



64 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

one's own wardrobe, and spend one's days in laun- 
dry work and mending. But it is well to ask prac- 
tical questions, Who does all these things for us ? 
Does it contribute to their well-being? Does it 
make for perfection ? 

As one's imagination plays about these compli- 
cated tasks, and transfers them to the self, they 
become less and less possible, until finally they are 
repudiated for others as they would be for the self. 

The way out is very open and clear. It is the 
way of simple, rational living. One may spread 
one's own table with bread and wine, and sit down 
joyfully to the feast. One may care for one's own 
simple home, and take delight in handling objects 
of real beauty. One may prepare the simple dress 
which best becomes a beautiful body. These sim- 
ple tasks of every-day life — food and shelter and 
clothing — may be made to minister to the health 
of the body and to the delight of the spirit. When 
such tasks are shared with those one loves, with 
equal members of one's family, not with servants 
and hirelings, the delight in wholesome bodily ac- 
tion is touched with the heart delight of dear 
comradeship. Surely, every one remembers the 
unaffected joy with which Homer's people, king's 
sons and queen's daughters, shared in the common 
toil of life, and how truly they idealized it. 

We lose immeasurably by making these daily 
home tasks complicated and hideous, and then turn- 
ing them over to a class of people whom, by the 
very magnitude of the tasks, we hold remorselessly 



THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 65 

to the lower life. Many who are warm advocates 
of an eight-hour day keep their own servants busy 
for almost twice that length of time. As a lover 
of perfection, one may not consent to any tasks 
which cannot be idealized, cannot be made sources 
of genuine joy, and one may not consent to them 
for others any more than for the self. 

It was a distinct human loss when we turned so 
much of our work over to machines and to unin- 
terested wage-earners. And it was a tremendous 
esthetic loss. We are coming to realize the poverty 
of our cheap machine-made goods, our chairs and 
tables and carpets and wall-papers and the rest. 
Middle-class houses are absolutely wearisome in 
the dull uniformity of their ugliness. It may be 
that Grand Rapids can turn out train-loads of quar- 
tered oak furniture much cheaper than you and I 
could, but that is not the whole of the question. 
The cheap thing gives pleasure but once ; this is 
when you pay the bill. It exacts compound pay- 
ment every time it enters into human consciousness. 

One would not for a moment wish to lose the 
immense benefits of machinery. But one would 
wish to withdraw it from the vulgar service of 
profit, and enter it once for all in the distinguished 
service of human esthetics. One would especially 
wish to see machinery applied in the performance 
of those daily tasks of necessity, the preparation of 
foods and fabrics, and withheld from all those more 
permanent tasks where hand-work confers individ- 
uality and beauty. 



66 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

The unit life, striving to act in harmony with an 
esthetic world-process, demands each day a gener- 
ous amount of physical exercise, demands a sound, 
health-abounding body, and keen, well-trained 
senses. One half of the working day is not too 
much to give to bodily work. If you give less you 
hardly contribute your share towards the common 
need, and you fail to receive your share of that vital 
quickening which comes from having a live body. 

A strong man cannot tire himself mentally by 
half a day's work. If his task be self -chosen and 
well-chosen, he can get nothing out of it but pure 
pleasure and human profit. He will do his best 
work. The brain-worker, on the verge of nervous 
prostration, pale, bloodless, cold, does nothing quite 
worth the doing. The morbid, insane, degenerate 
things are done by these people, men and women 
of sickly life and coward habit. Art work can 
only be done by artists. The poet who prepared 
to write his masterpiece by first trying to make his 
own life a poem is the man who has best defined 
poetry ; for poetry, Milton says, is simple, sensu- 
ous, passionate. And as poetry is the highest ex- 
pression of our humanity in art, so the genuinely 
poetic life must be its highest expression in action. 
The life which is unaffectedly simple, which is 
sensuous in the rich, pure way that Milton uses 
the term, which is touched with wholesome human 
passion, is precisely the social type which repre- 
sents the translation of the philosophic idea into 
practice. 



THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 67 

The bodily life becomes fine, the mental life 
becomes fruitful, just in proportion as they are 
touched with sound emotion. It is the wholesome 
human passion which makes the simple, sensuous 
life beautiful. It is the absence of this passion, 
this energizing play of emotion, which makes work 
drudgery, and all life dull and stupid. It is a 
crime for those of us who seek the perfect life to 
consent to any occupation which does not engage 
our love and interest. Daily life is thin and poor 
and mechanical when it is untouched with emo- 
tion. It seems to me a source of national poverty 
that so many of our people should work without 
emotion and without interest. One could serve 
the state with sincere passion, and perhaps our 
industrial workers will some time have that op- 
portunity ; but one can bring no passion into the 
service of the individual or corporate profit-taker. 
To one enamored of the perfect life, it is quite im- 
possible to accept hire and to put into the hands of 
another anything so altogether precious as one's 
own time and power. One must be the master of 
these, or one is no longer a man. As Wagner ex- 
presses it, " Without a strong, inner necessity, 
nothing true or genuine can ever come to pass." 

The transcendental elements in the philosophic 
idea do not change the quality of the social pur- 
pose, but, by adding to its sentiment, add a tre- 
mendous emphasis to its intensity and power. 
And this is precisely what one would expect. The 
immediate elements, as we have seen, spring di- 



68 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

rectly out of the experience of the moment. The 
transcendental elements rest upon the same expe- 
rience by the projection of the unfailing reason- 
ableness of all this experience into the less imme- 
diate territory of the inner life. Consequently 
the transcendental elements simply heighten the 
impulses of the daily life. If a man believe him- 
self to be immortal ; if he feel, however remotely, 
that he may claim kinship with the hosts of heaven ; 
if he realizes, in this conception of the Perfect 
One, the promise of an infinite progressiveness, 
there must come to him a consciousness of his own 
high destiny so vivid and so compelling that he 
will instinctively reject the meaner and shabbier 
plans of life, — the shop-keeping and sharp bar- 
gaining, the speculating and the pettifogging, the 
trifling and idling, the oppressing and exploiting, 
— and will, as a man should, with all the force 
that is in him, devote himself to the study and 
pursuit of that perfection which is the true goal of 
the humanized life. 



CHAPTER III 

THE SOURCE OF POWER 

The educational process by which the social 
purpose, the splendor of life, is realized, is an inner 
process, a changed way of looking at life, a redemp- 
tion, and must be brought about not by any outer 
pressure, but by the growth and outreaching of 
the spirit itself. Compulsory training is a possible 
process. Compulsory education is utterly impos- 
sible, as impossible as any other form of salvation 
by compulsion. The kingdom of heaven may not 
be taken by violence. If education is to be a 
practical process, is to succeed, it must act through 
the channels of the inner life, and must reach the 
mainspring of human action, the very source of 
power. This is in reality the most important of 
the many details which must be met by the edu- 
cator when he comes to turn his predetermined 
social purpose into a daily process. 

I propose, therefore, to devote this chapter to an 
inquiry into the sources of conduct, developing 
some of the suggestions contained in the last chap- 
ter. Such an inquiry has a value quite aside from 
its educational importance, for human motives enter 
into all of the daily concerns of life and determine 
the validity and timeliness of all of our art-forms. 



70 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

The study of mental processes is a current in- 
terest not at all confined to professed psycholo- 
gists. Life is made up of kaleidoscopic human 
relations, and every successful man, whether along 
the lower walks of the market or the higher walks 
of human enterprise, has consciously or uncon- 
sciously adjusted his task to the working of these 
processes. This popular interest in mind study 
satisfies itself at first with a mere search for what is 
curious and diverting, and even here the harvest is 
so great that one wonders it should have so long 
awaited the gathering. At present we are all 
familiar with the more striking of these results. 
We have had our attention called to the curious 
connection between the counting process and an 
individual number form ; to the devices by which 
we remember dates and sequences ; to the subtle 
connection between color and musical sounds ; to 
the association between personality and colors ; to 
the imagery which odors offer ; and to the hundred 
and one parallels by which we carry on the pro- 
cesses of thought. We have read Galton, and 
have learned — perhaps to our surprise, perhaps 
in confirmation of our own painful experience — 
that few men can very clearly bring up the face of 
their mother, or indeed of any one whom they have 
loved very deeply. Memory supplies such a mul- 
titude of pictures that we are not able to compose 
them into one face, and the image is blurred. 
Casual acquaintances, people to whom we are 
quite indifferent, march through the picture gal- 



THE SOURCE OF POWER 71 

lery of the mind with a distinctness which fairly 
mocks the longed-for shadow faces. This might 
he developed into a method by which the doubtful 
lover could distinguish between love and fancy. 
Other curious instances fall under one's own obser- 
vation. Thus, one man reports that the diagram 
by which he succeeded in keeping the Lord's 
Prayer in a very youthful memory was in reality 
the path of progress from the trundle-bed in the 
nursery to the haven of the mother's room : her 
pillow and " Amen " always fell together. Again, 
it chanced one day in turning over an old atlas that 
he came to a very dreadful picture of the Aztecs 
offering up human sacrifices. He hurried on and 
soon forgot the matter, but when he tried to go to 
sleep that night the picture came back in all its 
dreadfulness, and with it an overwhelming sense 
of the cruelty of the world. He was conscious of 
an appalling, unendurable blackness, a blackness 
which he could only overcome by bringing into his 
mental field of vision a flood of golden light. This 
flood crept out of the northwest, advanced, wavered, 
retreated, and then, with one magnificent sweep, 
devoured the blackness, and he was able to go to 
sleep. Others report that they picture the weeks 
as a series of recurrent waves, and it is quite com- 
mon to distinguish the days of the week by differ- 
ences of color or texture. It is also a common 
experience that certain writers are not readable 
because their sentences fail to produce distinct 
visual images. 



72 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

Many of these results have no particular impor- 
tance in the intellectual life, except perhaps to stim- 
ulate a deeper interest. Idle curiosity gives place 
in turn to a genuine concern to get at the heart 
of the connection between thought and action and 
so discover the motive power of the human drama. 
One best proceeds by scrutinizing human perform- 
ance in general. 

One cannot be in the world any great length of 
time without coming to distinguish in a broad way 
between two classes of people, those who are alive 
and those who are not, the live souls and the dead 
souls. The live souls are the people of power, the 
people who are and who do. The dead souls are 
the people of weakness, the apathetic mortals who 
are nothing and who do nothing. The difference 
is very real, the difference between red blood and 
yellow. There are all shades and degrees between 
the people of power and the people of weakness, 
but the extreme types are sufficient to point the 
lesson. 

On the whole, even an optimist must be op- 
pressed by the realization that among children 
there are many live souls, among older people many 
dead souls. In the little ones, there is still unity, 
the sound healthy body, the unencumbered mind, 
the unrepulsed heart. Their instincts are primi- 
tive and simple. What they want, they want very 
much. They take direct means, for their interests 
are very real. These qualities make childhood very 
lovable and very sacred. The death of a beautiful 



THE SOURCE OF POWER 73 

child is a public calamity ; the earth for the mo- 
ment is less fair. This reality and aliveness, this 
human personal power, make the comradeship of 
children delightful. They live in an atmosphere 
which silently reproves the less wholesome atmo- 
sphere of the adult world. One notices that the 
most beautiful men and women are the happiest 
when they are with children ; that they seek them 
out, and that they are forever manifesting their af- 
finity by an equal simplicity and directness. That 
was a very penetrating observation, — " Except ye 
become as little children." The kingdom is not one 
of profit and overwork and nervous worry and com- 
petition and human slavery ; not a world of blood- 
less bodies and narrow minds and cold hearts. It 
is the kingdom of participation and delight, the 
kingdom of the radiant life. And into this fair 
kingdom only the little ones may come, and those 
who are like the little ones in simplicity and sin- 
cerity. 

In what, .must we believe, does this power consist ? 
If we go straight from the child's world of the 
kingdom into the adult world, we perceive a great 
contrast, and it manifests itself on all sides. If we 
stand at the door of the church, and watch the men 
and women going in and coming out, how many of 
them are saved? If we walk the length of the 
street and peer into the faces of the passers-by, how 
many of them are alive ? If we go into the mar- 
kets among the employed ones, and regard their 
carriage, and the clothes they wear, and their habit 



74 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

of speech and thought, how deeply are we com- 
forted? If we pass in and pass out among the 
workers, among the men and among the women, 
and inquire into the secret of their lives, how many 
of them are free ? If we go among the professed 
teachers, the clergy and the schoolmasters, how 
many of them are sources of light ? In this older 
world, one finds the touch of death and of ill-con- 
cealed endurance. One finds the apathetic doing 
of distasteful tasks, the false activity of dead souls, 
the absence of glorious and radiant life. It is useless 
to point to their works, to the churches they have 
reared, to the houses they have builded, to the shops 
they have cluttered. It avails nothing that their 
office structures are very high and their bridges 
very long and their factories very big and their 
mines very deep. It is not impressive, the speed 
with which they come and go on their unworthy 
errands. It is no great matter that they can call 
the price of pork from New York to Chicago, and 
that soon the same unimportant news may be 
shouted all the way to San Francisco. None of these 
things are in themselves admirable. They bear the 
present stamp of a deficient humanity, for they are 
prompted by individual profit and not by the social 
good. They are not the source of power, not even 
the evidence of power. 

In what, must we believe, does this human weak- 
ness consist ? 

It may be that we are setting too high a standard, 
that it is too much to ask that the world shall in 



THE SOURCE OF POWER 75 

all of its aspects be beautiful aud fine. I do not 
myself believe this. But perhaps if we turn to the 
gentler side of life, to social intercourse and arts 
and letters, to human performance generally on its 
less commercial side, we shall find the power which 
is lacking in the adult world of the market. And 
this in part turns out to be true. In every com- 
munity there are groups of earnest people, beauti- 
ful men and beautiful women, meeting together for 
noble purposes, saying the thing that is sound and 
true, doing the thing that is generous and fine. There 
are pictures painted, so full of emotion that one 
feels one's own pulse-beat quicken in looking at 
them ; there are houses builded which breathe the 
very spirit of the home ; there are poems and es- 
says and stories which report truly the inner life 
and its aspirations ; there is much being done ade- 
quate in every way to keep alive in the heart the 
sentiment of gratitude and hope. 

And yet, even on this professedly human side of 
life, one feels the chill of dead souls, the absence 
of the radiant life. It is a world too full of heart- 
burn and disappointment and juiceless function, too 
deficient in disinterested human service. Social 
pleasure is transformed into social duty. Social 
usage has its phrase-book of polite lies which pass 
current among apparently good people. And so, 
too, the high purpose of art and letters and music 
makes failure along these lines the more appalling. 
There is surely something significant that our art 
is so largely exotic, that our students of design are 



76 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

copying Japanese prints, that our houses are filled 
with reproductions of the old masters, that our 
architecture is never of the period, but always of 
the past, that our few old buildings have a beauty 
unapproached by all the lavishment of a rich man's 
palace, that music speaks to our hearts of a far 
distant world, that the most glorious poetry is 
never thought of as a picture of the actual. Surely 
there is some grave reason for all this failure in 
present living, all this banishment of the beautiful 
dreams of the human spirit to a region of unreality. 
Why is it that we have so much partial death, so 
little of the full and radiant life ? 

These are hard questions, ungracious questions, 
some of them, but if we could answer them, we 
should be on the road to making this a surpass- 
ingly fair world, for knowing the source of power 
we could command power. In education, the reali- 
zation of the source of power is the beginning of 
wisdom. 

The answer is near at hand. The source of power 
is in human emotion, in human desire, in the hu- 
man heart. The children of men get what they work 
for, and in just the measure that they work for it, 
just the measure of their desire. The source of 
weakness is the absence of human sentiment and 
emotion, the absence of the inner necessity. 

Psychology, history, poetry, art, the events of 
the moment, all unite in testifying that this is 
the true answer. Human power is not a thing 
of the market, a thing to be bought and sold. It 



THE SOURCE OF POWER 77 

is not a product to be manufactured by any me- 
chanical process. It is a growth ; it is something 
organic. 

The modern human sciences lay tremendous 
stress upon the health of the body. As the organ- 
ism in which the world-drama is to be played out, 
it must be adequate to its high purposes. And 
further, if the drama is to be a magnificent one, 
the motive power back of it all, the emotional im- 
pulse, must be strong and compelling. The ma- 
chinery of human action is found to be startlingly 
direct. What we want to do, we do or try to do. 
What we do not want to do, we neither do nor 
have the power of doing. One cannot too much 
insist upon it, that just this seemingly baffling 
and capricious thing, human desire, is the main- 
spring of all human action. It must be enlisted 
in all our enterprises, for otherwise our enter- 
prises fail. 

This all becomes very clear when we regard 
what the world is at any moment doing. It is 
true that vast numbers of people seem to be doing 
what they do not want to do, and multitudes of 
them complainingly say so. But it is impossible. 
Under any given set of circumstances, the thing 
that we do is the thing that we elect to do. Other- 
wise the muscular system would fail to act, for the 
motor nerves would bring no command. Even 
from a materialistic point of view, the world-drama 
is first rehearsed in thought, and subsequent his- 
tory is but the projection of thought into action. 



78 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

And the prompter is the human heart, is human 
desire. We may regret the given set of circum- 
stances ; regret the narrow range of possible alter- 
natives ; we may wish with all our soul that 
circumstances were different ; but this must not 
blind us to the fact that things being as they are, 
we all do the thing that is least distasteful to us, 
that is, the thing that we want to do. By offering 
bitter alternatives, we can force men to do bitter 
things : Socrates voluntarily drinks the hemlock. 

There are two ways, then, of influencing human 
conduct. One is to offer limited alternatives, of 
which the least distasteful offers just enough hap- 
piness-producing quality to set it into motion. But 
compulsion of this sort leads to no good result. 
It is the method of absolutism. Educational and 
social work must proceed by the second path, not 
by narrowing the possibilities and so forcing re- 
sults, but by offering a free field and then enlisting 
desire on the side that experience has shown to be 
the best. To be psychological in the treatment of 
social problems, we must set ourselves to bring 
about the good sentiment, and then the good act 
will follow. It is the method of true democracy. 
The less patient way is to force the good act, but 
this sort of virtue requires the policeman. 

So important in education is this principle of 
voluntary action in a free field ; of choice of that 
alternative which is truly the richest in happiness, 
that it deserves the emphasis of repeated statement 
and illustration. Observe, for example, the pro- 



THE SOURCE OF POWER 79 

cess when you make children go through the opera- 
tion commonly described as doing what they do not 
want to do. It may be that the act is an unwel- 
come lesson. This is what happens, — some ex- 
terior motive is substituted. It may be the desire 
to please you ; it may be the fear of some punish- 
ment, perhaps the withdrawal of your esteem or 
perhaps the infliction of a more direct penalty. 
What the children really want in such a case is 
not to do the lesson, but to avoid the unde sired 
result of appearing not to do it; and this latter 
motive being the stronger, they do the lesson after 
a fashion, do it just well enough to avoid the 
penalty of not doing it. And they have their 
reward. But meanwhile, they have lost in direct- 
ness, in sincerity, and in power. And you, who 
have forced the issue in this unscientific way, you, 
it seems to me, have been a blind leader of the 
blind. This thwarting of the real desire, and the 
substituting of another less natural and less gen- 
uine desire, means in the end a deadening of the 
sentiment and a mechanicalizing of the whole pro- 
cess of life. It is the early stage in the produc- 
tion of dead souls. 

Observe, too, the process when, through either 
military or industrial absolutism, you make men 
and women go through the operation commonly 
described as doing what they do not want to do. 
The results are even more tragic than with chil- 
dren, for the material is less flexible, and when 
once bent down by expediency, seldom assumes 



80 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

again the upright position. It is surely quite safe 
to say that more than one half our workers are 
doing things which they say they do not want to do. 
But they do want the money, they do want the 
wage which comes from the doing of the distasteful 
task ; and driven by cold and hunger and nakedness, 
driven, above all, by the absence of a redeeming 
idea, they do want the wage more than they want 
to omit the work. What is the result ? The re- 
sult is that they want to give just so much work as 
will insure the getting of the wage and will avoid 
dangerous criticism, and that is all. And this is 
what they do, and such work is the work that we 
see. Worse still, there is no joy and delight in the 
doing. It is a tragedy that by thus trampling on 
the very condition of joyous work, work is quite 
robbed of its immense happiness-producing power. 
In reality, work is one of the things to thank the 
gods for. Every artist knows that. It is mourn- 
ful that the ideal of the majority of our present 
workers should be the man of leisure rather than 
the more perfect artist. But it will be so until 
work is humanized by the touch of genuine senti- 
ment, and so made one of the highest of human joys. 
It was the presence of this sentiment which made 
the old, loving hand-work so superior to the best 
of our uniform machine-made goods, a superiority 
which we tacitly acknowledge when we imitate the 
very imperfections of the hand-work in our attempt 
to bring back something of the old feeling. It 
was this sentiment which constituted the superi- 



THE SOURCE OF POWER 81 

ority of the artist-artisans who fashioned mediaeval 
Europe into a very treasure-house of art. 

The formula of that much-quoted English painter 
who reported that he mixed his colors with brains 
can be still further improved upon. The master- 
painters of the world have put something even 
more essential into their colors, — they have put 
their hearts. And this has been the wonder-work- 
ing ingredient which has gone into all the master- 
pieces of the centuries. 

The bribe of gold does not produce art or litera- 
ture or music or architecture. If it could, think 
what prodigious achievements we should be find- 
ing in New York and Chicago and San Francisco. 
Think how these very rich cities would vie with 
one another as the birthplace of the muses. But 
the muses are not born there. What we find is 
simply a market for the things reputed to be fine, 
a generous market, but not a source. 

It is worth remarking that it was the same at 
Eome. When that tremendous art impulse swept 
over Italy which succeeding generations have known 
and studied under the name of the Renaissance, 
Rome alone was barren and unproductive. She 
was a centre of political and ecclesiastical power, 
but not a source of genuine human achievement. 
The sources were elsewhere, in Tuscany and Lom- 
bardy and Venetia, places which made it possible 
; for the human spirit to be the prompter of human 
art-work. Rome was a charnel house, the home 
of the most impious of all iniquity, — the iniquity 



82 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

which masquerades under the name of religion. 
She half coaxed, half forced the masters into her 
service, Michelangelo and Raffaelle and others of 
the great ones, but she did not herself produce a 
single artist of the first rank. 

Let us never grow tired of repeating that good 
and great things are only born of a good and great 
spirit. They do not present themselves as supply 
to the beckoning hand of demand. 

In speaking of the utter impossibility of getting 
art work out of men devoid of the joyous art spirit, 
William Morris makes this comment : " At the 
risk of being accused of sentimentality, I will say 
that since this is so, since the work which produces 
the things which should be matters of art is but a 
burden and a slavery, I exult in this at least, that 
it cannot produce art, that all it can do lies between 
stark utilitarianism and idiotic sham." These are 
the words, not of a closet philosopher, but of a 
working artist, a man of affairs. 

The poverty of our own national performance, — 
and this performance is singularly poor when you 
consider that there are seventy millions of us at 
work, — this poverty is due to the absence of the 
higher motive power, to the absence of genuine 
feeling, the deep human sentiment which makes 
great things possible. If you stifle affection, if 
you disregard family ties, if you outrage personal 
inclination, if you neglect social fellowship, what is 
left of the inner life, of that superb motive power 
which keeps a man going? It is true that he 



THE SOURCE OF POWER 83 

plods along, but then the animals do that, and there 
is little credit in mere self-preservation. A life 
without positive good in it might as well not be. 

This suppression of sentiment, this closing one's 
eyes to thiugs which one ought not to close one's 
eyes to, is to waken up some gray day to the ennui 
of advancing years, and to wonder after all whether 
the game is worth the candle. It is a very real 
tragedy. One may not view it as a spectator at the 
play, for it is not representation, — it is reality. 

We need not grow tired of repeating, and it will 
be a long time before America may profitably grow 
tired of hearing, that the motive power of great 
achievement lies in the human heart and not in any 
form of enlightened selfishness of the acquisitive 
sort. The optimism which leads us to believe un- 
falteringly in the final outcome must not blind us 
to the present. Matthew Arnold quotes with large 
effect how the early crusaders were met at the end 
of each weary day's march by the eager clamor of 
the children : " Are we there ? Is this Jerusalem? " 
And each night the spent crusaders answered 
wearily : " Jerusalem is not yet. Jerusalem is not 
yet." We must not deceive ourselves. The bright 
pictures painted by demagogues, all sticky as these 
pictures are with milk and honey, are not yet true. 
Because our working people are not starving ; be- 
cause our middle classes have the smart look which 
comes about from living in a flat and being" fitted 
out in a department store ; because our rich people 
are squandering millions, it does not follow that we 



84 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

are civilized or socialized. Jerusalem is not yet. 
The task remains, — the task of humanizing and 
socializing the national life by importing into it 
the red blood, the warm touch, the social concern of 
a loving sentiment. It makes a tremendous differ- 
ence what a man thinks about as he works, what 
he believes, what he feels. It makes a tremendous 
difference whether he is a free man, expressing his 
own full, rich, joyous life in his work, or whether 
he is a hireling with no satisfied emotion to ex- 
press. 

Human action is the expression not alone of the 
passing emotion of the moment, but as well of the 
cumulative emotion of a lifetime, of several life- 
times. We know that fine phrase, — the instincts 
of a gentleman, — and all that we gather into it, 
the noble action made sure by the striving of years, 
perhaps of generations, made sure, however sudden 
and overwhelming the demand. We know what a 
real thing it is, how it sums up in one instant, with- 
out hesitation or argument, all the efforts after 
perfection which we have affirmed to be the abid- 
ing impulse of the human spirit. And those who 
behold the operation of these beautiful instincts 
marvel, it may be, and regard them as something 
uncaused, the miracle of perfect breeding. 

In the practical process of education, a process 
quite without meaning except as it carries out the 
social purpose, we can make no progress unless we 
build our work persistently on the admitted source 
of power. It is observable everywhere that we 



THE SOURCE OF POWER 85 

have a great number of useless learned persons, 
and their defect seems to be a failure of motive 
power. Half the equipment, with twice the hu- 
man spirit back of it, would have rendered much 
the greater service. It is on this very ground that 
our current schemes of education and society are 
open to most serious criticism. We are multiply- 
ing opportunities, multiplying the tools of achieve- 
ment, creating a vast accumulation of intellectual 
machinery, and then we make it ineffective by pro- 
viding insufficient motive power, — insufficient or- 
ganism and insufficient impulse. But if we really 
believed that the source of human power is to be 
found in the emotions, the very opposite course 
would be the one which we were bound to follow. 
Our first concern ought to be with the emotional 
life. 

Our progress even in educational matters has 
been mechanical rather than human. What we 
are constantly asked to admire is the machinery 
of instruction, the buildings, the laboratories, the 
courses of study, the learning of the teaching staff. 
We are prone to explain the fact that so many 
children pass through this admirable machine quite 
untouched by anything so deep as an educational 
process, quite devoid of even the rudiments of cul- 
ture, on the ground that there is some fault on the 
part of the children, just as if the problem of edu- 
cation were not to deal with children as they are, 
rather than with theoretical children. 

From this point of view of the source of power, 



86 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

the desires and interests of childhood are very- 
sacred possessions, strongholds to be guarded, de- 
fended, and energized. It is of far graver impor- 
tance that children should live sincerely, that they 
should put joy and heart into their occupations, 
that they should do well the thing which they 
want to do, than that they should satisfy any peda- 
gogical plan of older people's devising. To carry 
out such a culture requires tremendous finesse, the 
finesse of knowing when to let people alone. It is 
difficult enough not to interfere with grown people ; 
almost impossible to keep meddling hands off the 
children. It is the record of so many men and 
women that they lived a dual life in childhood, an 
outer life of conformity and expediency, an inner 
secret life of charming fancy and naive supposition. 
In some cases, when the pressure was too great, 
the spontaneous, self-prompted life gave way alto- 
gether, and there remained only a cripple, moving 
through the rest of life on the crutches of outer 
suggestion. In other cases, where a better fortune 
diminished the amount of conformity demanded, 
the inner life had a fair field for its development, 
and in wonder we name talent or genius what is 
only nature. The people of power are the people 
who have heard and followed the inner voice, who 
have had sufficient strength of character to resist 
temptation, when temptation came in the guise of 
interference. 

This explains, I think, why it is that so many of 
the people in whom the world is most deeply inter- 



THE SOURCE OF POWER 87 

ested have come from the great open of life, rather 
than from the schools. The biography of genius, 
even the biography of talent, shows a surprising 
percentage who have eluded the schoolmaster, and 
have come out winners. It is no argument against 
school-keeping, but a very forcible one against ill- 
advised school-keeping. 

Children differ not so much in natural endow- 
ment, great as are these differences, as they do in 
will power. The real work of education ought to 
be the cultivation of the will to do, rather than the 
setting of tasks which would be helpful if the will 
were there, but which, in its absence, are quite mean- 
ingless or even harmful. In the vocabulary of 
school life we call this force " interest," but it is bet- 
ter to name it "feeling," for the term is less peda- 
gogical, and it does emphasize what we want for- 
ever to be emphasizing, that even formal education 
is a theatre for the play of the same great forces 
which make up the outer world-life, and that it is 
a true process, just in proportion as it has this uni- 
versality. The apathy, the anaesthesia, which comes 
when feeling is faint and interest wanting, is the 
stone wall against which so many human move- 
ments dash and break. We can only hope for 
success when the motor part of our adventure is 
provided for. 

This more psychological method is quite at vari- 
ance with the educational ideas of an older genera- 
tion, and is even now somewhat of a shock to those 
assured persons who believe that the first proper 



88 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

work of the school or of the sober-minded parent 
is to break the child's will. This is a process, by 
the way, which involves a dangerous strengthening 
of the adult will, but apparently this side of the 
matter has been forgotten. 

In an old book, published about 1748, 1 recently 
found this searching question : " To what sins are 
children especially prone ? " And the answer, done 
in awe-inspiring capital letters, was this mild re- 
sume of juvenile depravity : " To Ungodliness, Pro- 
faneness, and Self-sufficiency." It is needless to 
say that I found this book in Connecticut. Our 
average child may surely be cleared from the first 
and the second of these charges, while the last 
charge, self-sufficiency, is, when wisely directed, 
the very source of power. The old text about 
bringing up a child in the way he should go was 
twisted into the more convenient form of bringing 
up a child in the way you happen to want him to 
go, and this is quite a different matter. Happily 
this old morality, or rather, one ought to say, this 
old immorality, has crumbled to pieces, and a 
sweeter, sounder, saner spirit has taken its place. 
But old practices have considerable inertia. It is 
still thought, in certain quarters, a convenience to 
make a child go in the way we happen to want him 
to go, rather than in the way that he ought to go, 
and the result is what we see. Children are sub- 
mitted to the inventions devised for adult life, to 
the clothing, food, confinement, ceremonies, bric-a- 
brac, rapid transit, in a word, to the friction of 



THE SOURCE OF POWER 89 

modern complex living, and in such an environ- 
ment they prove so altogether inconvenient that 
they must be suppressed, in order to save the 
already tense nerves of the adult world. It would 
be pretty hard lines for us, if we were obliged to 
listen to conversations in which we could take 
neither part nor interest, and when we wanted to 
read Maeterlinck or Hauptmann, to be told that 
something else was better for us. The plan of 
suppression, as a mere convenience, works very 
badly. No one has quite the heart to really carry 
it out, or perhaps the physical strength or patience, 
and the result must be accounted a product of our 
own mismanagement, and of nothing so comforting 
as total depravity. And when we remember that 
this plan of suppression, even were it a success 
as an adult convenience, would be an out-and-out 
failure educationally, since it corrodes the very 
mainspring of life, it is evident that we must seek 
for some other way out. 

The better plan is the more gracious task of carry- 
ing into every-day life the beautiful dreams of our 
singers and prophets. In this entirely practical 
inquiry into education, I feel at liberty to advocate 
these more ideal and beautiful methods, because I 
hope to show in the chapter on cause and effect 
that only those things are moral and beautiful 
which are at the same time practicable. And I 
mean to urge, what idealists are not commonly sup- 
posed to urge, that one's practicality is the true 
measure of one's morality. These beautiful dreams 



90 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

of a fairer and more vital world require love and 
courage to realize them. But both love and cour- 
age are practical qualities which already exist, and 
which may be heightened by all those who regard 
them as worthy objects of pursuit. If we believe 
with Milton, that poetry is simple, sensuous, pas- 
sionate, then by making daily life simple and sen- 
suous and passionate, we should be making it a 
veritable poem. This programme of effort accords 
very well with the more prosaic analysis that we 
have all along been insisting upon. We could 
apply such a programme nowhere so fittingly and 
with such high hope of success as in the process of 
the children. 

It is interesting to note that this more rational 
plan of development makes quite unnecessary that 
other plan of suppression which we have seen to be 
both so unsuccessful and so disastrous. The better 
plan requires that children shall not be submitted 
to the complicated inventions devised for adult life, 
shall not be asked to be overdressed, and unduly fed, 
and closely housed ; to sit as still as a mouse, when 
every drop of red blood surging through their veins 
urges them into activity ; to bury themselves with 
abstractions and generalizations before the data of 
the concrete world have been at all mastered ; to 
put down that warm flood of feeling which consti- 
tutes their very life. 

To be simple, — this is less expensive and less 
difficult than to be complex. It means for children 
the least clothing necessary, a wholesome, unexcit- 



THE SOURCE OF POWER 91 

ing diet, apartments free from useless impedimenta 
and rich in the more subtle beauty of color and 
proportion. It means long hours of sleep and pro- 
digal hours in the open, ample exercise and self- 
prompted occupations. 

To be sensuous, — this is the special privilege 
of childhood ; to care frankly and lovingly for the 
rich world of sensation, for warmth and sunshine 
and color, for sound and form and odor ; to rejoice 
in health and bodily power and appetite ; to feel 
the charm and glory of the magnificent drama of 
Nature ; to find life sweet and glad. 

And finally, to be passionate, — it is to touch 
this simplicity and sensuousness with feeling, and 
so to make it human and fine. 

From the point of view of the children much of 
this provision is purely negative, nothing more than 
a commendable letting alone. In an atmosphere 
so free from stress as this, there is every induce- 
ment for self -activity and for a wholesome uncon- 
sciousness of process. From our own point of 
view, the very letting alone is the part of a positive 
plan. The simplicity and sense culture and passion 
are objects of educational effort. 

When one starts upon such a pursuit as this, the 
danger is that these elements may come to be mis- 
taken for ends in themselves. It is this mistaking 
of means for ends which makes reformers rather 
tiresome traveling companions. A simplicity which 
is overconscious is much worse than a complexity 
taken for granted and submerged. 



92 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

In reality these elements are only means. It is 
their cumulative effect which* makes the rich life 
of humanity. The simplicity is the condition of 
health and self-activity. The sensuousness is that 
consciousness of the outer world which makes pos- 
sible a full report of the senses, and a consequent 
rich material of thought. The passion is the love 
and interest and reverence and enthusiasm of life, 
the motive power back of all that is excellent and 
beautiful. 

We commonly think of education as something 
which has to do with children and young people, 
and with them alone. Sometimes, to be sure, we 
please ourselves with platitudes about education's 
extending through the whole of life ; but, with our 
commercial ideas of the value of adult time, we see 
to it that education, as an effective process, shall 
not interfere with the purposes of trade. When 
this non-human spirit dies, however, and we turn 
to a truer and sounder life, we shall be applying 
the term education to the whole of life as a process 
by which we realize the social purpose. As I have 
already said, it is in this broader sense that the 
term will be used throughout the present inquiry, 
as an all-inclusive process which begins with the 
first act of parenthood, and ends only when, with 
reverent hands, we close the eyes of those who 
travel into the undiscovered country. It seems to 
me, then, that there is no defensible warrant for 
the great gulf which in thought and practice we 
place between childhood and adult life. The sim- 



THE SOURCE OF POWER 93 

plicity and sensuousness and passion which are so 
admirable in the little ones are no less admirable 
in men and women. The inventions devised for 
the adult world, those inventions which hinder the 
perfection of childhood, are in reality fatal as well 
to manhood. As a counterpart to the enfant 
terrible of the American home, we have the unlov- 
able, unbeautiful, ungracious men and women of 
our social and business world. The way out for 
us is the same as the way out for the children, — 
it is the simplifying of our lives, the vivifying of 
our bodies, the rebirth of our feelings. 

This simple and untechnical account of the 
source of power finds ample verification in every 
page of history, for the world-story after all is 
nothing more than the story of human sentiment. 
The causes that have been lost and won, the victo- 
ries and defeats, the Reformation and the Renais- 
sance, all the great things that have been done, 
have been first achieved in the emotional life, in 
the human spirit. The immense material resources 
of Asia hurl themselves against Greek sentiment 
and are shattered. The Roman empire, robbed of 
Roman spirit, falls apart ; China, the unalterable, 
the anaesthetic, is dying. Napoleon's cynical re- 
mark that Heaven espoused the cause of the larger 
army was nowhere better disproved than in his 
own history. The power of a patriot following is 
a spiritual fact which finds admittance to the army 
and navy register. A handful of colonial farmers 
is worth a regiment of Hessians. And so, too, 



94 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

with conservatism. It has been routed by an in- 
visible enemy. After Waterloo, we find the forces 
of reaction in possession of Europe, in possession 
of armies and revenues and thrones. But in the 
heart of the people there was a greater force, and 
the work of liberation has not ceased. To one man 
comes a supreme passion ; the unity of Italy, it may 
be, the reality of the Fatherland, the liberation of 
Greece ; and behold, it is an accomplished fact. 

It was the wise Goethe who said, " Be careful 
what you pray for in your youth, lest you get too 
much of it in your old age." 

If we pray for profit and wages and all sorts of 
messes of pottage, we shall get them. If we pray 
for outward conformity and stock education, we 
shall get them. If we pray for ugliness and squalor 
and sweatshops and the tenement house of a hun- 
dred sorrows, we shall get them. 

But suppose that we changed our prayer. Sup- 
pose we prayed for health and beauty and accom- 
plishment and power and social fellowship, for 
that human wealth which will go all round, for the 
wealth of individual integrity and of social well- 
being. Surely as come the seedtime and the har- 
vest, we should get these things too. When this 
human wealth becomes an abiding emotion it will 
become a reality. The one irresistible, unconquer- 
able thing in all the world is human sentiment. 
The civilization of to-day is vital just in proportion 
as it engages that sentiment. It is a memory as 
soon as the sentiment is withdrawn. 



THE SOURCE OF POWER 95 

The institutions of the hour are vested interests. 
They are built of solid substances, of brick and 
stone, wood and metal. They have money in the 
bank. A philosopher comes along and laughs at 
them ; a great teacher rebukes them ; a saint points 
beyond them. What is the result ? They dissolve 
into the past. 

It is impossible to exaggerate the omnipotence 
of human feeling, of human emotion, of human 
desire. It is the giant, the wonder-worker, and 
its service must be engaged in any human adven- 
ture in order to make the adventure succeed. It 
is a monopoly of power of the most colossal kind, 
a trust which may be used for the advantage or 
the disadvantage of mankind. 

" A ruddy drop of manly blood 
The surging sea outweighs." 

In the face of so tremendous and unequivocal a 
lesson, one cannot ignore the motive power of a 
world. The miller looks to his mill-race ; the en- 
gineer replenishes his coal-bin ; the motor-man sees 
to his current ; the sailor regards the quarter of 
the wind ; so must we people who have more impor- 
tant concerns on hand look for the carrying out 
of them to the strength and purity of the feelings. 
As men we must see to it that the heart beats 
high ; as educators we must see to it that the tide 
of childish feeling is at the flood ; as sociologists 
we must see to it that the people care. As we do 
this, we are strong ; as we fail to do it, we are 



96 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

weak. Pagan defeat and superseding came when 
the human heart grew faint. It is the same world, 
this in which we live ; the source of its power is 
still in the round tower of the heart. 



CHAPTER IV 

ORGANIC EDUCATION 

[ The people of power are the people who have 
not only the strong motive force of a conserving 
passion, but as well a keen and efficient tool for 
carrying out its purposes. From the point of view 
of the unity of man, it is impossible to attain power 
save through the development of all the faculties of 
the body, the five senses of sight and hearing and 
touch and taste and smell ; the normal appetites 
for food and exercise ; the habit of free intellectual 
play, and the healthful life of the emotions. To 
have these operating together for the realization 
of a high social purpose, this is the health of the 
human organism, and nothing less than this may 
be accepted as success, i 

So it happens that those of us who hold to this 
conception of the unit man, look upon education 
as a process of organic culture, the thoroughgoing 
culture of all sides of man's nature, practically the 
regeneration of his organism ; for it is only by such 
a process that he can come into a totality of power, 
and can satisfy that impulse towards perfection 
which is the most abiding impulse of the human 
spirit. 



98 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

/ The raw material of thought, if such an expres- 
sion be permissible, is composed of those elements 
of consciousness which we call the reports of the 
senses. Objectively speaking, it is the stuff out of 
which the whole thought-life is built. The brain 
can add nothing to this material. It can only work 
it over, and combine it into new relations. The 
thought-life is dependent for its fullness upon two 
quite determinate factors, — upon the completeness 
and accuracy of this report of the senses, and upon 
the soundness of the brain process in working the 
sense report into thought. / 

One does not have to be a very profound philo- 
sopher to perceive the bearing of all this upon 
organic soundness and integrity. Deficient sense 
organs cannot report the so-called outer world with 
any degree of accuracy and completeness. If we 
could imagine that these reports were all that they 
should be, that the sense organs were doing good 
work both at the outer extremities and at the 
corresponding brain centres, we should still not be 
able to expect resultant power if the brain lacked 
skill in working up this material into thought. 
Knowledge is a perception of relations. It implies, 
therefore, both the apprehension of detached facts 
and the bringing them into orderly relation. 

It would seem that, as a practical people, we are 
doing a most foolish thing to expect human ef- 
ficiency without fulfilling the conditions of human 
efficiency. 

If we have any doubt about the illogic of our 



ORGANIC EDUCATION 99 

expectation, we have only to turn to life and ask if 
human power has been attained. I should be sorry 
to make out a bad case for life's power, for I have 
the most unbounded hope in its ultimate attain- 
ment, but the results so far are singularly meagre. 
The world is centuries old, and the opportunities 
for performance have been manifold and varied, 
and humankind has been like the sands of the sea. 
But in the calm, unemotional survey of the world 
which the sociologists give us, it seems that, on the 
whole, few human performances have been notable, 
and few men and women have been distinguished. 
The exact estimate of individual power is one dis- 
tinguished person in every half million. 1 In Amer- 
ica, then, we may boast about a hundred and fifty 
distinguished men and women. Such an estimate 
is of course open to serious question, since we might 
not agree to the same definition of distinction. A 
better test is, perhaps, to consult our own experi- 
ence, beginning our criticism where charity rightly 
begins, — at home. It would be an ungracious 
task to catalogue too closely our own abundant de- 
fect and to set off against it the slender list of our 
merit ; but surely every man and woman of us at- 
tempting to live the life and gain the power of 
totality must stand aghast at the spectacle of so 
very partial a performance. Nor is the weakness 

1 It is true that the last edition of " Who 's Who in America " 
contains over eleven thousand names, hut it is to he rememhered 
that these people are not distinguished, hut are merely promi- 
nent for the moment hy reason of official position or other tran- 
sient emphasis. 

LofC. 



100 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

far to seek. It comes from our partial hold upon 
life, from the incompleteness with which we see and 
hear and touch and taste and smell, from the limi- 
tations and the dullness of the brain, from the 
insensibility of the heart. 

If the same scrutiny be turned towards our 
neighbor, and with gentler method we inquire into 
his shortcomings, we find it even as with ourselves. 
It is in his lack of totality, his failure to report the 
universe, his insufficient grasp, his too feeble pulse. 
Deaf and dumb and blind and anesthetic, we stand 
in the midst of a universal wealth which we are un- 
able to appropriate. 

This poverty of organic power is not compen- 
sated by any amount of mechanical devices or any 
aggregate of material wealth. It is an illusion to 
substitute modern inventions for personal human 
power, and to imagine that the world has gained in 
excellence by the substitution. Let us recite the 
facts. The modern man has a voice which is a bit 
squeaky and harsh, and boasts no great carrying 
power ; but then he has the long distance telephone, 
and can call prices from New York to Chicago. 
Stentor could not have done that. The modern 
man is rather near-sighted and astigmatic, and may 
fail to recognize his best friend across the street ; 
but then he can look at the moon through his great 
telescopes, and can see things which Ptolemy never 
caught sight of. Our modern man may be a little 
dull of hearing and rather hard to talk to, but with 
the microphone he can hear a fly walk. He is a 



ORGANIC EDUCATION 101 

trifle short-winded and finds running fatal, but why- 
should he want to run when the " elevated " shoots 
him over the city, and the " limited " over the coun- 
try ? All along the line of modern human defect we 
find the substitution of some mechanical excellence. 
The modern man is not personally attractive, but 
he has undoubted taste in bric-a-brac. He has lost 
his wholesome appetite, but gained a French cook. 
He fails in democracy, but he gives alms. He de- 
nies himself fresh air and pure water, but he has 
the sanitarium and the doctor. Stated in this bald 
fashion, the illusion is evident. One puts it aside 
as resolutely as one would put aside the tempter 
himself. The substitutes are poor trinkets to be 
offered in exchange for human power and beauty 
and excellence. 

From this way of looking at life, all activity 
which makes against the health and sanity and 
completeness of organic power is criminal, and this, 
whether the wrong be committed in the name of 
education, or industry, or art, or religion. Know- 
ledge itself is a poor thing unless it be the instru- 
ment of power, and knowledge gained at the ex- 
pense of power stands condemned already. One 
cannot recover from one's surprise to find so self- 
conscious a process as education, a process which 
we all admit to be a means and not an end, — ignor- 
ing its own material, the sensational world ; ignoring 
its own process, the wholesome all-round activity 
of the organism ; ignoring its own end, the cultiva- 
tion of power, and turning to the cheap substitutes 



102 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

of outer fact. And this again is due, it seems to 
me, to the evil influences of our commercial ideas 
of life generally. The definite informational know- 
ledge has been held to have a clearly recognized 
market value ; it is a tangible possession akin to 
the machinery upon which we set so great store, 
and it is supposed in some occult way to offer a 
preparation for future work. Organic culture has 
no market in view. It has small eye to the future. 
It proposes only the goal of the present, for it does 
believe that this human end is better than the mar- 
ket, and that the only earnest of a good future is a 
well-used present. 

The panorama of life unrolls itself before each 
one of us, and to each offers a different signifi- 
cance. We may believe, if we choose, that the pan- 
orama at bottom is one and the same thing, and 
that the different report we return of it is due to 
the personal equation of the observer. But as we 
have seen, the impression made upon us is all that 
we apprehend. Whatever theory we may hold re- 
garding the essential nature of the panorama, we 
must act upon our experience of it, and our experi- 
ence runs somewhat like this : at the circumference 
of our life we encounter the outer world. We see 
and hear and touch and taste and smell through 
the contact of the several sense organs with this 
outer world. The activity is peripheral. From 
each extremity, each sense contact, flows a nerve 
impulse to the centre, to the brain, and here, by 
a subtle magic which science has not been able to 



ORGANIC EDUCATION 103 

explain, the nerve impulse translates itself into a 
sense impression, a sensation. These nerve im- 
pulses are the only avenues of approach to the hu- 
man intelligence. They are, as we have seen, the 
whole raw material out of which the panorama of 
life is built. 

If we take any one organ, as the ear, the dif- 
ferences in its report are tremendous. The ear of 
the average man transmits enough sound to enable 
him to carry on the average occupations of life. 
He detects the larger differences of sound, the soft 
and loud tones, and in a rough way is conscious 
of the pitch, and notices the varied character of 
the tones. But the finer distinctions are all lost, 
— the smooth modulation by which we pass from 
soft to loud, the relationship of pitch expressed in 
the musical scale, the varying overtones which de- 
termine the character of the note. The two ears, 
simply as bodily organs, are quite unlike. One of 
them is a finer, keener instrument than the other, 
and in human service and esteem is surely worth 
more than the other. It will do very much the 
better work. And the one ear has been made 
better simply by training, the inherited training of 
a fortunate birth and circumstance, and the train- 
ing of personal, individual effort. To the outer 
ear, sound is nothing but an air pulse. All the 
differences of sound, the loudness, the pitch, the 
timbre, are represented in the air pulse. But this 
air pulse means nothing to the brain in such form, 
and the worth of the ear, its sensitiveness, depends 



104 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

solely upon the nicety with which these air pulses 
are translated into nerve currents and sent hurrying 
along to the brain, and upon the discrimination of 
the brain itself in turning the nerve currents into 
the sensation of sound. Practically, then, we have 
three necessary elements, — the transmitter, the 
connecting line, and the receiver, and each must 
act effectively and surely. An anatomically perfect 
outer ear with a paralyzed auditory nerve, or a 
healthy nerve with a hardened ear drum, or a 
healthy outer ear and nerve with an inefficient 
brain centre, and we have an organ failing to per- 
form its function. The magnificent sensitiveness 
which calls forth our admiration, the ability to 
recognize unerringly the notes of the scale, to 
distinguish between DjJ and Eb, to detect the dis- 
crepancies in the tempered scale, or to note the 
overtones of a given fundamental, this superb 
excellence of ear depends upon the health of all 
three elements, of outer ear, and connecting nerve, 
and receiving brain centre. 

I recall a lecture on sound shadows, where the 
source of sound was a very high-pitched whistle, 
making many thousand vibrations per second. 
The usual piano of seven and a third octaves ranges 
from about 29 to 4096 vibrations per second, while 
the human voice falls between 87 and 775. The 
effect of the whistle was individual in the extreme. 
Many of the audience, people of presumably nor- 
mal hearing, were quite unconscious of the sound, 
but those who did hear, found the note almost un- 
endurable on account of its penetrating quality, 



ORGANIC EDUCATION 105 

One need not enlarge upon the different universe, 
the widely varied panorama of life, which this in- 
dividual constitution of the ear alone brings about ; 
and yet sound is only a small part of the day's 
experience. 

If you take some other organ, such as the eye, 
w T hich is occupied during the entire waking day, 
the difference is even more striking. The average 
eye is a dull organ, dull in its perception of form, 
of color-tone, of light and shade. The panorama 
which it reports is a poor, blurred affair, a meagre 
wood-cut compared to the glorious painting seen 
by the sensitive, cultivated eye. It is a newspaper 
illustration alongside of Titian or Guercino. It is 
a matter of common experience and comment that 
mountaineers so little appreciate the marvelous 
beauty of their surroundings. It is frequently ex- 
plained as the dulling effect of familiarity. But 
this, I think, is not the right explanation. We 
do grow callous to ugliness, for when we once 
recognize it we withdraw our thought from it, and 
ignore and deny it until it almost ceases to be. 
But the reverse holds in the things of beauty. If 
we once see beauty we see it increasingly, for our 
thought goes out to it and dwells upon it and 
appropriates it, even exaggerates it, as Ruskin in 
the presence of Turner. The insensible dwellers in 
the midst of beauty see houses and trees, fields and 
forests and mountains ; they see the possessions of 
their neighbors, the farms of Smith and Brown 
and Robinson : but the landscape, which no man 
owns, they do not see and cannot delight in. 



106 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

To take a cross-country walk with a friend is to 
submit him to a searching examination. What he 
sees and points out to you is extremely significant. 
His comments are revelations, not of the country, 
but of himself. He never reports the whole pano- 
rama, for he never sees it. His panorama is one 
of form, or color, or light and shade, or science, or 
trade, or human import. One man sees beauty, 
another geology, another crops and values, another 
domestic possibilities. A stroll through a picture 
gallery discloses the same large differences. Here 
the painter speaks. Looking at his picture, you 
may know what sort of eyes he had. It is useless 
to answer that we have all the same sort of eyes, 
and it is only a different way of using them. The 
eye may be structurally much the same in all of 
us, but as an organ of service, it includes the optic 
nerve and the brain centre : the function of see- 
ing is so individual that the panorama of life is a 
strictly private possession. 

Equally marked are the differences in touch and 
taste and smell. If these senses are alert and 
keen, the universe is one thing. If they are dull 
and uncertain, the universe is something quite dif- 
ferent. 

We can do little for the betterment of the outer 
organs, the eye and ear and the rest. We can 
help them out with certain mechanical devices, but 
these correct only anatomical defects. The real 
field for culture is interior. 

The basis of all organic culture is good health, 



ORGANIC EDUCATION 107 

the health of sound nerve and red blood. The 
strength of a chain is measured by its weakest 
link. Between the circumference and the centre, 
between the outer sense organ and the inner brain 
centre, there intervenes the machinery of commu- 
nication, of transmission, — the carrying nerves, — 
and these must be fulfilling their office, passing 
along the impulse centreward, or the terminals are * 
of scant service. In the same way the brain cen- 
tre, as we have seen, must be in good order, or all 
fails. Now beyond supplying false drums for the 
ear, and correcting lenses for the eye, and burn- 
ing out obstructions in the nose, and cutting the 
binding tendon of the ring finger, we can do al- 
most nothing for the outer sense organs, and no- 
thing, so far as we know, for the transmitting 
nerve, beyond general good health and vigor. It 
would seem, then, that to cultivate the senses is to 
cultivate the brain end of them. It looks very 
much as if the cultivation of the senses is really 
mental culture, and not a distinct and separate 
bodily culture at all. And this is precisely what 
we believe, we who believe in organic education, 
and we believe it both from our fundamental view 
of the unity of man, and also from this quite un- 
theoretical and every-day method of getting at 
the heart of the matter. That we see and hear 
and touch and taste and smell in consciousness is 
the direct conclusion of experience as well as of 
that idealistic philosophy which rests upon expe- 
rience. 



108 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

This sort of sense culture multiplies tremendously 
the power of human acquisitiveness, — the only 
kind of greed which a man given over to the study 
and pursuit of perfection can at all commend and 
practice. The seeing eye and hearing ear, and dis- 
criminating touch and taste and smell, bring into 
consciousness a perfect wealth of sensation, abun- 
dant material for abundant thought. This alone 
would make life very rich. It is the sensuousness 
of the poet, and with simplicity and passion is the 
material of the highest expression of life. This 
rich sensuousness makes the difference between the 
full and the meagre temperament, the wealthy man 
and the poor man. It is interesting to notice how 
men, clever enough to see the bearing of this on 
the power of life, and consciously deficient in it 
themselves, have bemoaned their poverty. Emer- 
son writing to Carlyle, Amiel writing to himself, 
the half joy of the twentieth century face to face 
with the full joy of Greece, all confessions, all con- 
trasts, pour out the same burden of complaint, — 
the complaint of temperamental limitation. If the 
sense culture of which I speak accomplished only 
this, if it brought the rich phenomenal world in 
full, sound measure into human consciousness, it 
would be rendering a tremendous service, and one 
might still advocate it with a large enthusiasm. 
But the office of sense culture is double. 

Speaking objectively, the general ability of the 
brain to work up sensation into thought depends upon 
its own structural power. With the development 
of each sense, there goes along with it the develop- 



ORGANIC EDUCATION 109 

inent of the corresponding brain centre, and this 
latter development, as we have seen, really consti- 
tutes the sense culture. The work of Paul Flech- 
sig, of Leipzig, though questioned by some psychol- 
ogists at the time, seems now to be very generally 
accepted. The sense of touch has its centre in the 
vertical lobe of the brain ; the sense of smell, in 
the frontal lobe ; the sense of light, in the occipital 
lobe, and the sense of hearing, in the temporal lobe. 
Between these four sense centres lie the real organs 
of mental life, the great thought centres, or centres 
of association. They are regarded by physiologists 
as the highest instruments of psychic activity, the 
physical centre of thought and consciousness, and 
are distinguished from the sense centres by a pecu- 
liar and elaborate nerve structure. But the brain 
itself is nothing more than an assemblage of all 
these centres, and their development means the 
development of the brain as a whole. So it turns 
out that along with one's increased power of know- 
ing the universe goes an increased possibility of 
thinking about it and putting it into orderly rela- 
tion. The very culture which brings this wealth 
of material brings the power to use it. The quanti- 
tative exercise of the sense centres means increased 
coordination of the faculties, and increased develop- 
ment of the thought centres. Intellectual activity 
appears to be a direct function of brain surface, 
just as the intensity of chemical action in dissolving 
metals in acid is a direct function of the surface 
exposed. The total brain surface is the sum of 
the surfaces of its parts. 



110 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

It seems to me that in this double office of sense 
culture we have a profoundly significant truth, one 
which we are bound to lay practical hold upon, and 
having laid hold upon, to apply in education. As 
a safeguard, it may be wise to again remark, par- 
enthetically, that this account of brain action is a 
convenience of language, and must not blind us 
to the fact that what we experience is an integral 
stream of consciousness. 

If this sense culture yield such mental power, 
and we are after power, it is natural to inquire 
whether there is any other method of direct culture, 
any other way of getting at the brain, and making 
it still more efficient. There appears to be none. 
It is quite impossible to get at the brain directly. 
It is an inaccessible centre. One must approach it 
along the avenues of the sensory nerves. The brain 
gives audience to but one class of ambassador, and 
that is neural. If, then, the brain is to be de- 
veloped physiologically, it must be done by such 
exercise of the centres as will develop the centres 
physiologically. This development is the necessary 
accompaniment of all exercise of the senses which 
is not automatic. When it is automatic, it has no 
longer any power to attract the attention, and con- 
sequently no educational value. In any scheme of 
scientific sense culture, therefore, the work must be 
changed before it reaches the automatic stage. It 
is in this respect that school work differs so essen- 
tially from factory work. Furthermore, the greater 
claim of the work upon one's attention, short of un- 



ORGANIC EDUCATION 111 

wholesome fatigue and dulling of emotional interest, 
the richer the mental reaction. As quantitative 
work makes this demand in the largest measure, 
it is of all sense exercise quite the most valuable. 

In the ordinary course of study, the curriculum 
of the present day, we too much deny this prin- 
ciple of brain development. Many of the studies 
are offered as almost purely disciplinary studies, 
and this is notably the case with ancient languages 
and certain forms of mathematics. In many cases 
the discipline is quite admirable, for it accustoms 
the mind to sound logical processes. Both the on- 
looker and the student himself are conscious of 
large benefit. But there is in the success of this 
method of discipline an element which has not, I 
think, been made nearly enough of. It is this, 
that the discipline succeeds with clever children, 
those who do not particularly need it, but fails in 
the case of large numbers of less evolved little 
people. If the study were pursued as an end in 
itself, as music or art or composition, and the 
unfit were eliminated by a process of natural 
selection, it is clear that there could be no adverse 
criticism. In this case, however, the study would 
logically have to be elective, as it would manifestly 
be cruel and irrational to doom a student to tasks 
in which failure was a foregone conclusion. But 
if a study be offered by way of discipline, and be 
compulsory, it is equally clear that it must be a 
means rigidly adapted to the end in view and must 
possess catholicity of application. 



112 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

When one looks at the operation of the old cur- 
riculum, the pursuit of language and mathematics, 
one sees so many falling by the wayside, children 
who are the despair of their teachers, and for whom 
parents feel obliged to apologize. In every high 
school, the land over, one sees this constant falling 
out of line. Perhaps only one third or one quarter 
of the children remain to graduate. There are many 
explanations of this repeated failure, explanations 
quite genuine, and quite convincing to those who 
offer them, — the children are dull ; the standard 
is high ; the school is very particular ; it is not 
meant for the incompetent. We are all familiar 
with these arguments. But the matter has quite 
a different aspect when with both eyes open you 
are as willing to call in question the wisdom of the 
teachers and the studies, as you are to call in ques- 
tion the wholesomeness of the children. Surely 
an educational process is failing lamentably, when 
it succeeds with so small a percentage of its ma- 
terial. A harvester which scattered more than half 
the grain, a mill which discarded more than half 
its raw material, a mining enterprise which left 
more than half the ore untouched, would not be re- 
garded as very highly successful operations. How- 
ever clean the wheat, or attractive the ware, or 
glittering the metal, the adventure would be an 
admitted failure. In current education, however, 
it seems that many are called and few are chosen. 
There are even institutions, running in the name 
of education, which boast of the number of stu- 



ORGANIC EDUCATION 113 

dents who are annually squeezed out. It may be 
an odd way of looking at it, but this sounds to me 
like boasting of one's own inefficiency, and I think 
we should all regard such an operation as quite 
the thing that it is. 

It seems to me, then, a very serious criticism of 
the non-organic education that it does not make 
for power, that it merely uses power. One cannot 
help being struck anew with the numbers of peo- 
ple who have come to distinction quite outside of 
the formal educational process, not uneducated peo- 
ple, but people educated outside of the schools, by 
life itself. The great literatures and fine arts and 
heroisms have not been the exclusive or even the 
general performance of the learned. The great 
things have more commonly been done in the large 
open of life, done by men and women of organic 
power, and sincere lives, and warm hearts. 

A discipline which succeeds with clever chil- 
dren, and not with dull ones, has been put to no 
very severe test. In fact, it has been put to no 
test whatever. With a brain depending for its 
material upon the report of a phenomenal world, 
and for its power of working this material into 
thought upon its own internal structure and nour- 
ishment, it becomes a perfectly meaningless pro- 
cess, to neglect the physiological part, and propose 
the impossible, formal tasks which now make miser- 
able the daily school life of the slow but sensitive 
child. Furthermore, children are dull or not dull 
according to the test you impose. If you ask 



114 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

them to do things which happen to be easy for 
you, and they repeatedly fail, they may seem dull 
from that point of view. But suppose the tables 
were turned, and they set the tasks. Suppose they 
asked you to do the things which are quite easy 
for them, and you repeatedly failed, as you very 
probably would, you would be equally dull from 
their point of view, but you would be quite prone 
to defend yourself by ascribing failure to the un- 
suitableness of the task. Perhaps this is the de- 
fense proper to both cases ; perhaps the standards 
are not high, but are simply wrong ; perhaps the 
school is very particular only in wanting material 
which will make success easy and possible, and is 
not at all particular enough about the skill of its 
teachers and the reasonableness of its tasks. 

Theoretically the educational process ought to 
fit everybody. As a process, its sole end is to 
carry out the social purpose, and this purpose, as 
we have seen, is only the philosophic idea done in 
terms of life. In none of this theoretical founda- 
tion is there the least assumption regarding the 
superiority of the material to be acted upon. 
There is no discrimination. The belief in the 
unity of man applies to all, and the social purpose 
applies to all. There is practically no reason why 
the educational process should regard any material 
as impossible. To further the impulse towards 
perfection is to further it anywhere along the line, 
and to take humankind as it is, clever children 
and average children, and even dull children, and 



ORGANIC EDUCATION 115 

to regard them all as available and welcome ma- 
terial. It is a very grave criticism of the current 
educational process that it is qualified to deal only 
with selected material and lacks catholicity. 

But when the process of organic education is 
submitted to the same scrutiny, it is found to be a 
process which is the possible carrying out of a 
logical social purpose. It asks for no picked ma- 
terial. It is meant for the betterment of the in- 
competent and deficient. It is meant, too, for the 
betterment of the clever and the average. It is 
only by such comprehensiveness that the educa- 
tional process can carry out the social purpose. 
Organic education assumes a brain, if not deficient, 
at least less perfect than it may ultimately become. 
It assumes a body not yet come into its full mea- 
sure of health and strength. It assumes emotions 
not yet coherent and compelling. In a word, it is 
not defeated by the intrusion of human weakness, 
for it assumes human weakness and immaturity at 
the start. The process is to take the children as 
they are, and to bring about their betterment. Its 
standard is high, but this applies to the end of the 
process and not to the beginning. No children are 
too dull ; none too incompetent. This process, too, 
is very particular, — it is particular to include all. 
It is not too much to say that organic education is 
the process of democracy, the process of minister- 
ing to the whole people, and about it centre the 
same hope and promise which centre about true 
democracy. 



116 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

The cultivation of the senses means, as we have 
just seen, the cultivation of the brain ; and when 
this sense culture is undertaken for purely human 
and educational ends, it is planned throughout 
to realize the most complete brain culture pos- 
sible. This requires large skill. To make sure of 
the motive power, the emotional impulse, the work 
must appeal to the interest and love of the chil- 
dren. As far as possible, it must be self-directed 
and spontaneous and joyful. There must be an 
element of choice in it. Everything we do must 
be in harmony with our initial creed of the unity 
of man. We cannot cultivate the senses without 
at the same moment cultivating the emotions and 
the intellect. Any attempt to separate our work, 
to cultivate the heart or the mind or the body 
quite alone, is doomed to failure, for the organism 
does not so act. In the specific work of cultivat- 
ing the senses, this unity of action must always be 
borne in mind. And to be successful, we must be 
very specific. We must be willing to deal with 
every detail of daily life, with food and drink and 
dress, with sleep and baths and exercise, with read- 
ing and companionships and amusement, above all 
with the flood tide of the emotions. Upon these 
details, however homely, health and power de- 
pend. 

In the greater part of our present thought and 
practice, chaos prevails. There is a painful disre- 
gard of cause and effect, and this not alone among 
the ignorant classes, but as well among those who 



ORGANIC EDUCATION 117 

affect culture. It is either excess or deficiency. 
We commonly show excess in food and stimulat- 
ing drinks, in dress and company. We show de- 
ficiency in exercise, sleep, and fresh air, in baths 
and amusement and affection. The very first step 
in the cultivation of the senses is the establish- 
ment of health through the rationalizing of these 
homely details of the daily life. 

It should be easy to correct excess : the process 
of cutting off is so very simple. But here the 
force of custom and our own lack of sturdiness 
come in and make the process difficult. American 
school children have a large amount of nervous 
activity, but they lack poise and vigor. They have 
not enough good red blood, and this comes about 
from lack of nourishment. They are insufficiently 
nourished while at the same time they are overfed. 
A little food and a large power of assimilation 
are what we want. I notice with interest that 
certain French physicians are recommending less 
food, and this is significant in a nation whose spe- 
cial forte it is to tempt the appetite. Plain, whole- 
some, nourishing food, given to a digestive appara- 
tus prepared to utilize it, is the first condition of 
organic culture. 

Our dress is another error of excess. As a rule, 
we wear too much clothing, too tight, too heavy, too 
unserviceable. It is a difficult matter to reform. 
Even though we have the testimony of persons who 
wear comparatively light clothing all the year, who 
do not wrap up their throats and bandage their 



118 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

chests and otherwise invite ill health, the direct 
testimony that they never have colds, that they 
escape the grippe, that they are seldom if ever 
ill, it carries curiously little weight with it. Few 
persons seem willing to pay the price of this good 
fortune. It is a bit of cowardice. You have per- 
haps heard of the man who was so afraid of death 
that he committed suicide ! It appears almost that 
these victims of grippe and colds and the like are 
so afraid of a little suffering that they endure great 
suffering. It need not be pointed out that, merely 
as a matter of social esthetics, a cold in the head 
is quite an unsuitable thing. Dress reform need 
involve no loss of beauty. Indeed, if it did that, 
it would cease to be reform. Children's dress 
especially may be simple and serviceable, and still 
eminently artistic. Beauty in dress, like beauty in 
architecture, depends upon proportion and color. 
Ornamentation is a secondary contribution. 

One must also place company under the head of 
excess. We are social animals, as Aristotle long 
ago observed, and probably we were social even 
before we became human. Our becoming human 
is possibly a result of our being social. In social 
intercourse, we have in truth the very medium for 
human development. As Goethe says, "Talent 
forms itself in solitude, but character grows in the 
world- stream." But the simple, sensuous, pas- 
sionate living which constitutes the poetry and the 
good of life is not yet the rich possession of the 
adult world. The hope of the future lies in pro- 



ORGANIC EDUCATION 119 

longing the period of childhood, and this hope can 
only be realized by reducing the friction of life, by 
simplifying it, and by giving the children long 
stretches of quiet time. It is a commonplace of 
observation that grown-up people are in few mat- 
ters quite so altogether injudicious as in their treat- 
ment of children. They take liberties with them. 
They make them self-conscious. They spoil or 
neglect, coax or tyrannize. While this remains 
true, the only thing to do is to protect the children 
by keeping them in the background, especially by 
keeping them out of boarding-houses and hotels. 

On the side of deficiency, we have a long list. 
It should be very easy to supply such inexpensive 
good as exercise and sleep and fresh air, baths and 
fun and love. But the very habit which has made 
daily life deficient in these matters makes for the 
continuance of the deficiency. The way out is to 
regard such matters as essential, and to order them 
into each day's life. Exercise, as exercise, aside 
from the cultivation of some special faculty, is 
rather a dull thing, and in a world suffering visibly 
from overwork, it seems hardly a social or a moral 
thing. But the necessary home tasks, which are 
full of meaning and may be made full of sentiment, 
might wholesomely be shared by the children, each 
according to his strength, and furnish the very 
exercise needed for health. Abundant play in the 
open air, a little garden of one's own, sleeping 
rooms with wide open windows, a house full of sun- 
shine and fresh air, — these things are all attain- 



120 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

able as soon as they come to be regarded as essen- 
tial. The habit of scant sleep is a commercial one. 
We want to make all we can out of the days, for- 
getful that the real value lies in their quality. If 
we believed practically in immortality, we should 
perhaps be willing to go to bed earlier. When 
Emerson visited California a few years before his 
death, he traveled with such superb leisure that 
people said of him that he seemed truly to believe 
in a future life. In most localities in America, 
water is an abundant luxury, but its use for bathing 
purposes is much more restricted than it should be, 
much more so than we people who have one or two 
baths a day are apt to suppose. One of the ironies 
of our present educational illusion is the purely 
theoretical use made of the study of physiology. 
The little books contain full information in regard 
to the advantages of frequent bathing, and even go 
into homely details about the freedom of the pores 
of the skin from effete matter as being one of the 
conditions of good health ; but not one teacher in a 
hundred inquires whether these injunctions are 
carried out. Now, to an idealist, quite given over 
to a belief in cause and effect, it would seem wiser 
to practice hygiene than to preach it. In Switzer- 
land, they are introducing baths into some of the 
newer schoolhouses. One practical difficulty is the 
expense or even absence of hot water in the meaner 
city tenements, and in the majority of village and 
country cottages, but then cold water is far better. 
It is always obtainable, and it certainly produces a 



ORGANIC EDUCATION 121 

sturdier physique and gives a greater immunity 
from colds. If the habit of cold baths be started 
in summer, it may safely be carried through the 
year. 

To be alive is essentially amusing. Life is 
vastly entertaining if one take it in the right spirit. 
Life is much better than the play, for one has 
the added fun of taking a part. And then, too, 
the drama unfolds much more logically than the 
majority of those offered at the playhouse. Even 
the homely tasks are full of fun if one so elect. 
Formal amusements are a little like formal exer- 
cise : they lack the snap and sincerity of the 
natural and spontaneous article. Once catch the 
forced smile, once guess the heavy heart, and 
the thing seems dull or even pitiful. Moreover, it 
is sandwiched in between two inconveniences, — 
the getting ready and the getting home. And yet 
we need more amusement, children and grown-up 
people alike, but an amusement scattered through- 
out the day and made genuine and simple and 
joyous. The connection between health and hap- 
piness is more than one of good wishes. The 
happiness is essential to the health. Misery of 
spirit induces a long chain of physical ills. The 
best imaginable tonic is an overflowing heart. 

This insistence upon good health is imperative. 
Two things only pass to the brain, blood and sen- 
sory nerve impulse. An anemic brain can make 
little use of the best arranged sensory experience. 
Good health is the first and absolute condition for 



122 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

furthering that impulse towards perfection which is 
the heart of the social purpose. When we realize 
this, the careful mother will say : " My child seems 
ill ; I must send him to school ; " for the school, the 
institution whose peculiar province it is to carry on 
the educational process and realize the growing 
perfection of the social purpose, will stand for 
health and vigor and life. What does the careful 
mother say now ? She says the very opposite : 
" My child is quite ill ; the doctor says I must take 
him out of school." Does this not seem to you a 
shocking accusation, quite as shocking as the pro- 
clamation of ineffectiveness on the part of those 
very particular schools which boast the number of 
students they have been unable to handle success- 
fully ? What are we dreaming about, what fetish 
of false culture are we all worshiping, when we 
hear with mild regret that the schools are crippling 
our children, and when we do not rise up and stop 
the harm ? It is as if a shepherd misled his own 
flock, or a priest beguiled his own people into evil. 

The explanation is simple. 

Education is not yet conceived by the majority 
as a redeeming and saving process, the regenera- 
tion of the organism ; and lack of health is still 
regarded by the majority as a mysterious dispensa- 
tion, rather than as a result of definite and control- 
lable causes. When one comes to look upon health 
as simply a mark of intelligence, as a private duty 
and a public duty, as indeed an essential part of 
the moral life, and when one comes to regard ill- 



ORGANIC EDUCATION 123 

ness as an immoral and quite impermissible thing, 
one has taken an important step in that process of 
education which proceeds along the line of cause 
and effect. With strong, beautiful bodies and good 
red blood, one may start hopefully upon the cul- 
ture of the senses, the seeing and hearing and 
touching and tasting and smelling. The good 
health of the body means the integrity of the sense 
organs, the efficiency of the neural processes, the 
soundness of the brain tissue. The real work of 
sense culture then becomes a process of mental dis- 
cipline. It is a question of exercising the functions 
and enlarging the intellectual discrimination. It is 
practically the perfecting of the organism, making 
it more open to full and accurate sense impres- 
sions and more skillful in combining them into a 
magnificent panorama of life. 

It is particularly to be observed that the cultiva- 
tion of the senses does not mean simply placing 
the healthy, human animal in the face of a rich 
phenomenal world, and letting this world make 
such an impression as it will. So negative a pro- 
cess would bring only limited good. It is true, I 
think, that men who spend the greater part of 
their lives outdoors, foresters and husbandmen, 
sailors and fishermen, have a sounder intelligence 
than those who submit themselves to the monotony 
of factory work ; but the office of education must 
be more positive than this. There must be a 
systematic endeavor to enlarge sense experience 
along its quantitative side. Every impression must 



124 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

be followed by some action, something by which 
the impression will be gauged and measured and 
tested and chastened. Every sense impression 
means a sensory nerve current setting in towards 
the brain, then a process of intellection, and finally 
an outgoing discharge along a motor nerve. To 
translate the incoming nerve current into fine ac- 
tion is to cultivate the senses. If the action be 
measured, that is, quantitative, the intellection is 
more pronounced and intense, and consequently 
the mental culture is the greater. This makes the 
difference between educational hand-work and mere 
play with tools. 

In the training of the eye, for example, we must 
have the exercise of untiring attention and compari- 
son. If the judgment to be cultivated is that of 
distance, each space impression must be compared 
with other space impressions, and so eventually 
translated into terms of motor effort. The energy 
put forth in covering a given distance or reach- 
ing a given thing becomes the yard-stick for subse- 
quent measurement. If the concern be for form 
and proportion, there must be constant comparison 
of form with form, and the measurement given in 
terms of pleasurable feeling. When color is in- 
cluded, the contrasts and comparisons are innumer- 
able. If only light and shade are under considera- 
tion, the attention is concentrated on these solely, 
and all other elements are excluded. The train- 
ing of the eye is forced upon us by the very neces- 
sities and circumstances of life, but only to the 



ORGANIC EDUCATION 125 

extent of making the eye a rough convenience. 
The seeing eye differs from the uncultivated eye 
almost in kind. You may remember how long it 
took you to find out that the shadow of a tree 
trunk on the snow is blue and not black, and 
more likely some one else pointed it out to you. 
You may remember the first time you ever saw 
green in the sky, the first time you realized that 
color is not absolute, but merely relative. You 
may remember the first time you caught the feel- 
ing expressed in a well-designed building, and the 
revelation which a sense of proportion brings. 

If we grant this great outer world an objective 
and independent existence, then clearly, human 
eyes have different powers of seeing, and the dif- 
ferences are spiritual, are the result of intellectual 
growth and culture. If it be essentially a subjec- 
tive world, as we idealists suppose it to be, the case 
is precisely the same. The unfolding mind has an 
increasing wealth of experience, and its projection, 
the outer world, is one of increasing interest and 
beauty. 

With these great possibilities within grasp, it 
seems a criminal thing to substitute outer facts, — 
words, — the report of others, — the dead thing, 
— for the living organic reality. 

The practical process of cultivating the eye is not 
difficult. It needs the seeing eye in the teacher, 
and this is not always a part of the curriculum 
of the normal school. After that it needs simply 
the enlargement of the experience of the children 



126 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

along lines of observation and experiment, work 
which will enlist their interest and their self- 
prompted activity. 

In the cultivation of the sense of touch, we have 
a very similar course to pursue. The special organ 
of touch, the hand, is ever in contact with its 
opportunity, but nothing comes of it unless the 
will work itself out through the hand. It is a 
wonderfully delicate organ, and capable of great 
cunning, but it must be developed by intelligent 
exercise. The motor nerves to set this piece of 
mechanism into action must be strengthened and 
vivified. The brain tissue back of it must be 
drilled to efficient command. Above all, the hand 
must be taught to carry out the exact purposes of 
the brain, an obedience which will be forthcoming 
just as soon as the brain is itself exact in its opera- 
tions. The poor workman is the one whose inner 
panorama is obscured by clouds and mists. The 
divine craftsman is clairvoyant. 

The eye and ear and hand are made the objects 
of special training in our art academies and con- 
servatories and manual training schools ; and more 
and more, as the doctrine of human wealth pene- 
trates the social consciousness, is this special train- 
ing being introduced into the educational process 
of childhood. The senses of taste and smell are 
also of large importance in the successful conduct 
of life, but they have never, so far as I am aware, 
been made the objects of educational care. They 
might well be, for they stand in intimate relation 



ORGANIC EDUCATION 127 

to the life-drama. There is a particularly close 
connection between the sense of smell and the 
processes of memory, a connection which Darwin 
pointed out many years ago. A suddenly per- 
ceived and once familiar odor has power to recall 
a person, a situation, a locality, with a vividness 
which few other reminders possess. The connec- 
tion of taste and smell is so close as to be one of 
dependence. It is well known that a loss of the 
sense of smell means a loss of taste, and all the 
curtailment of discrimination and pleasure which 
such a loss involves. A sense of smell is valuable 
also as an* index of the condition of the mucous 
membrane, and any impairment demands immedi- 
ate attention. In this case the chain of disaster 
is very direct. The loss of taste following upon 
that of smell means a diminution of appetite, and 
a feeble appetite is not consistent with robust 
health. Nor does the chain end here. The same 
diseased condition of the membrane, which brings 
loss of smell and taste, is very prone to bring 
about an impairment of hearing. Dullness of hear- 
ing is more frequently caused by catarrh of the 
eustachian tube than by anything else. The blunt- 
ing of these three senses — hearing, taste, and 
smell — means a shrinkage of the personal uni- 
verse, such as no parent or teacher ought willingly 
to contemplate. Furthermore, when the organs 
are in a state of health, the training of both taste 
and smell to quantitative judgments involves a 
mental training which is quite worth while. 



/ 
128 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

The carrying out of organic education means 
an enlargement of the personal universe, an in- 
crease in the dimensions of life, an expansion of 
personal control and power. In the whole educa- 
tional process I know of nothing more interesting 
and more touching than to watch this growth, the 
increased power of the accomplished organism. 
The little craftsmen who are just beginning their 
hand-work are so manifestly helpless. It is almost 
pitiful to see the lack of coordination among their 
faculties, the absence of any real control over the 
organism. Where there is anything like normal 
material to work upon, the change is marvelous. 
Control takes the place of lack of control; slug- 
gishness gives place to alertness, awkwardness to 
dexterity. It is not too much to say that the work 
of human regeneration is going on from day to 
day and before one's very eyes. In this world of 
enlarging personality, one cannot help being pro- 
foundly sorry for that other world which elects 
idleness. 

Where hand-work has been employed for the bet- 
terment of deficient human material, — the feeble- 
minded and the criminal, — the change seems even 
more marvelous. The personal statements of the 
superintendents of the home at Elwyn, Pennsylva- 
nia, and of the reformatory at Elmira, New York, 
and the published reports of those institutions, 
show that in the one, manual training is most 
highly valued as a mental restorative, and in the 
other, as a moral tonic. 



ORGANIC EDUCATION 129 

The significant element in the transformation 
wrought by organic education is that it has taken 
place essentially in the brain itself. The clumsy 
people of the world, those who cannot seem to man- 
age their person and make use of their senses, show 
a similar clumsiness in their mental operations. 
After some experience in observing the connection 
between mental power and bodily performance, 
one comes to mistrust the mental capacity of those 
who are visibly not in control of their own organ- 
isms. We all know what curious physical awkward- 
ness results from embarrassment. The very word 
" clever " means quick. If we search the whole 
vocabulary of commendation, one that has come 
down to us polished by the wear of centuries, we 
find a significant connection between mental states 
and bodily acts. The clever people are the people 
in bodily command ; men and women of marvelous 
quickness of action ; happy possessors of that ad- 
mirable tool by which the human spirit carries out 
its admirable purposes, an accomplished, developed 
organism. Every one can recall such cases in life 
and in literature. These favorite children of for- 
tune surely point the way to the realization of the 
social good. 

All this is very obvious, and yet one may venture 
to repeat these obvious things because in our edu- 
cational process we are not yet acting upon them. 
We are not yet strengthening the source of power, 
the human heart ; we are not yet furnishing it with 
an efficient tool, an accomplished organism. Our 



130 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

quest for perfection is not a very earnest one, is 
indeed a mere bit of idle sentimentality if we neg- 
lect these very obvious matters of the law. 

And what I have to say in concluding this chap- 
ter seems to me still more obvious. We care for 
perfection in our ideal pursuits, — in art, in litera- 
ture, in music, — and we admit that we care. We 
want the greatest possible charm and delight and 
beauty and excellence and power. Sculpture creates 
strong-limbed men and noble women and beautiful 
children, people of power. Architecture works 
for subtle proportion and fine suitableness, for the 
things of excellence. Painting makes permanent 
the magnificent color and pure line of our dreams 
of beauty. Literature has for its avowed purpose 
the production of those perfect art forms and that 
rich imagery and that genuine emotion which con- 
stitute human delight. And, finally, music realizes 
its high office in speaking most directly and most 
touchingly to the human spirit. Now, these are 
not idle words. They are not pretty playthings 
for the imagination to dwell lightly upon and then 
pass on to the solemn affairs of trade and busi- 
ness. On the contrary, they represent that more 
permanent achievement by which the men of a 
later time judge whether the age has been worthy 
or unworthy. It is the record of the best that we 
have thought and done. But art work can only be 
created by the artist, poems by the poet, symphonies 
by the musician. The solemn affairs of trade and 
business, about which a part of the world speaks 



ORGANIC EDUCATION 131 

quite reverently and impressively, have no genuine 
contribution to make toward the abiding wealth of 
the world. This wealth is human. It consists of 
beautiful men and beautiful women and beautiful 
children. The practical concern of life is with 
human charm and human delight and human 
beauty and human excellence and human power. 
When we save the human soul, redeem it from 
commercialism and incompleteness and organic 
defect and all other uncleanness, then all else that 
is good shall be added unto it. And the monu- 
ment of this rich life will be an art and literature 
and music which will proclaim its own excellence. 
But one must begin at the human end, with the 
perfecting of the human organism. 






CHAPTER V 

CAUSE AND EFFECT 

It is the defect of all voluminous writers that 
they mix considerable chaff with their wheat. Men 
like Ruskin, who write with too great ease, or like 
Spencer, who write with too great industry, inevi- 
tably say things both true and false. But their 
very wealth of expression makes their words worth 
winnowing. That Ruskin is at times extreme, and 
Spencer sometimes mistaken, does not detract from 
the immense value of the best of their utterance. 
In such instances one may profitably recall the 
shrewd remark of Leibnitz, " Show me a man 
who has never made a mistake, and I will show you 
a man who has never done anything." And the 
case of Ernest Renan comes to mind, a scholar who 
has amply atoned for any minor errors in his ori- 
entalism by the magnificent sweep and vigor of his 
religious conceptions. One can usually trace out 
the line of unreliability. It is the result of some 
personal defect, some unfortunate and embittering 
incident, some too limited experience. 

The defect in Ruskin is due to the cumulative 
nature of his emotions. He becomes carried away 
by the force of his own feelings. He ends in 



CAUSE AND EFFECT 133 

extremes. Yet lie may be read with the utmost 
profit, if we take seriously the wise aud beautiful 
things he has to say about life and art, and stop 
quite short when we detect the signs of intemper- 
ance. 

The defect in Spencer comes from his unsocial 
life, a defect which shows itself in the wasteful 
controversies he has indulged in, in his false view 
of the position of women, and in much of his 
social theory generally. Yet he is most helpful, 
" our great philosopher," as Darwin called him, and 
his service has consisted not in any very original 
contribution to human knowledge, but rather in 
the clear and orderly way in which he has stated 
and illumined the fundamental things in the sepa- 
rate sciences, and brought them into close touch 
with one another. 

Now, as the result of this wide analysis and 
synthesis, Mr. Spencer has been led to say what 
seems to me a very true thing indeed, that the 
intellectual progress of a people, or of an indi- 
vidual, is by nothing so clearly measured as by 
the hold which they have upon the principle of 
causation. 

To believe rigidly in cause and effect is to be a 
philosopher. To act rigidly upon the belief is to 
be an artist. 

As an article of intellectual belief, none of us 
deny the principle of cause and effect. On the 
contrary, we subscribe to it most heartily, and we 
have a very disparaging opinion of those who do 



134 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

not show an equal loyalty. And yet I have ven- 
tured to name philosophers those who rigidly be- 
lieve in it. 

As a practical people, we all act upon the prin- 
ciple of cause and effect, — more or less, — and 
again we have a very disparaging opinion of the 
poor souls who fail in this particular. Yet I have 
ventured to name artists those who really do act 
upon it. 

There is apparently some discrepancy in both 
our belief and our action. The heart of the 
trouble is that in neither are we very thorough- 
going. I am afraid that we are all very lazy. 
It is apparently easier not to think than to think. 
As Emerson put it, " Men are as lazy as they dare 
to be." This sluggish way of taking life, and 
failing to act out our beliefs, has an organic cause. 
It is due to the poor tissue of which most of us are 
made, to the lack of circulation, to the dead and 
alive organism. It is a part of the illness and 
disease which come from pursuing things instead 
of pursuing the major human ends. Such laziness 
leads to indefiniteness. When lucidity is pressed 
upon us by some sharp, clear-cut questioning, we 
straighten up and make defensible answers. For 
the moment, we do believe in cause and effect, and 
are momentarily philosophers. But the philosophy 
soon fades, and we pass into our accustomed vague- 
ness. In this region of fuzzy thinking in which 
we too commonly live, we hold half a dozen con- 
tradictory beliefs and never know it. We believe 



CAUSE AND EFFECT 135 

in causation as a direct article of the intellectual 
creed, but we also believe in a lot of other things 
which are an equally direct denial. When the 
questions grow at all subtle, and particularly when 
we knock up against old traditions and conventions 
and Mrs. Grundy and the rest of the obstruction- 
ists, we go very lamely indeed, and end by being 
anything but philosophers. 

This confusion is reflected in our action. In 
very obvious things we are causationists. If we 
want our corn to grow we put fertilizer in each 
hill. If we want to be warm, we show our respect 
for the wood pile and the coal bin. If we are 
setting out on a journey, we ordinarily inquire the 
road. If we build a house, we look to the strength 
of our material. In these very obvious operations 
we have grown quite practical. When it comes to 
disposing of the corn, and using the warmth, and 
dignifying the journey, and glorifying the house, we 
are much less successful. We are not a very subtle 
people. We are much more given to action than 
we are to thought. Consequently, we show our 
essential want of practicality just as soon as our 
belief or our action touches the domain of those 
problems which involve the more subtle elements. 
Now, education is one of those practical processes 
in which the principle of cause and effect is very 
much needed in both our creed and our practice. 
But it is also a process in which our inaptitude for 
subtle belief and subtle action most strenuously 
shows itself. Our current education is not sue- 



136 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

ceeding in proportion to the money and effort 
which are being put into it, for the simple reason 
that it is not built up on the line of causation. 
Yet education, the problem of problems at the 
present moment, the living end of our philosophy, 
is a very simple and natural process as soon as one 
imports into it a thoroughgoing belief in cause 
and effect, and action which is equally causational. 
It is this necessity, the moral necessity of being 
practical, which makes education only discussable 
on the higher grounds of social purpose and se- 
rious philosophy. If one does not know where one 
wants to go, there is little chance of success in de- 
vising a process for getting there. The most prac- 
tical man in the world cannot follow sealed orders 
until the seal is broken. The two conditions of 
success in education are a vivid realization of the 
social purpose and an equally vivid realization of 
the practical, causational nature of the process by 
which it is to be carried out. 

We have seen what the social purpose is. We 
have seen that it is the production of human 
wealth. Our belief in human unity makes it quite 
as explicit that the educational process must be 
organic in order to create this wealth. These are 
direct causational lines, and it only remains for us 
to live up to them. Simple as the process is, how- 
ever, we shall have constant need of love and 
courage, love enough to keep the process at all 
times thoroughly human, and courage enough to be 
true to our own programme. Upon this love and 



CAUSE AND EFFECT 137 

courage I insist, not as a mere pretty sentiment, 
but as a condition to the fulfillment of that obliga- 
tion which presses upon all morally evolved per- 
sons, the obligation of making their adventures 
succeed. It was maintained in the last chapter 
that good health is a part of the moral life of the 
body, and in the present chapter it will be main- 
tained with equal insistence that success, the wise 
adjustment of means to ends, is a part of the 
moral life of the spirit. 

It would be an easy matter to resist temptation, 
even when spelled with the capital letter of the old 
homilies, if it always came to us duly labeled. 
But the trouble is that it has a way of coming in 
the guise of virtue, and then it is almost irresist- 
ible. This is particularly true in education. It is 
a process which has enlisted tremendous interest 
and tremendous good intention. Its operations 
have all the guise of virtue. If one stand aloof 
from these attractive operations and decline to 
lend a hand, one must seem to others, and even to 
one's self, as rather a disagreeable and useless 
fellow, with a much greater turn for finding motes 
than for casting out beams. So great is the simili- 
tude of virtue in the best-ordered of our schools 
that they constantly act as a tempter to the would- 
be reformer. The intention is so good, the teachers 
are so devoted, the place is so clean, the children 
are so clever and so lovable, that the effect is to 
create the impression that we have attained what 
we have not attained. In the face of these tempta- 



138 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

tions, one must be forever applying the eausational 
yard-stick, and forever repeating one's educational 
catechism, — What is the social purpose ? How 
must the educational process act? Is the philo- 
sophic idea a reality ? This method of defense is 
sure to rout the enemy. If one find the absence 
of the great idea, the absence of a distinct and 
defensible purpose, the absence of eausational meth- 
ods, then one surely has to deal with an immoral 
and unsocial process, and an earnest man cannot 
go in for it. 

In very truth, it seems to me a greater social 
service to hold back from much of our present 
educational method, the machine of official educa- 
tion, than to lend it a hand. But one may do this 
with more grace if one has a definite plan to offer 
as a substitute, and if one is trying, however par- 
tially, to put such a plan into operation. The pur- 
pose of the present volume is to suggest both a 
definite way of looking at the educational problem, 
and an equally definite way of solving it. Nor is 
this solution entirely in the future. It is discern- 
ible as the inner heart of many an earnest con- 
temporary movement. This newer plan of educa- 
tion rests upon just this principle of cause and 
effect. It includes all children as its proper ma- 
terial, and covers all ages from birth to the very 
end. In its conception, the plan is truly demo- 
cratic, and in its operation it is eausational. In 
deference to its underlying principle of the unity 
of man, it may be designated as organic educa- 



CAUSE AND EFFECT 139 

tion. The nearest approach to the carrying out of 
the programme of organic education is to be found 
in our kindergartens, our manual training schools, 
our art schools, our music schools, and our gym- 
nasiums. These, in a measure, have in mind the 
social purpose, the sound, accomplished, beautiful 
person. In a measure, they carry out this purpose 
along the lines of cause and effect by wrapping up 
the soundness and accomplishment and beauty in 
the very tissue and fibre of the organism itself. 

There are occasional wise men who decline the 
reputed necessaries of life, the conventional dis- 
play in food and clothes and shelter, who limit 
themselves to the real necessaries, and who take, as 
their extra part, the luxuries of life, leisure, and 
health, and happiness. This ideal would plainly 
be considered uneconomic. According to the cur- 
rent commercial view of life, consumption must 
keep pace with production, or the industrial mill 
stops. It is only by getting people to want a 
whole lot of ugly and unnecessary things that the 
profit hunger of our enormous productivity can be 
even half satisfied. But it is not enough that peo- 
ple should simply want these things. They must 
also have the money to pay for them. This is 
sometimes lacking, when the machines have pro- 
duced more than men can contemporaneously con- 
sume or destroy, and wages must needs stop along 
with the over-efficient machines. Then we have 
the curious spectacle of hard times caused by over- 
production, thousands of people made hungry and 



140 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

naked and houseless, because they have produced 
too great wealth. It does not quite sound like 
cause and effect. 

This pressure on consumption is sometimes dain- 
tily called raising the standard of living ; and this 
benevolently determines the rate of wages, for 
wages, like a mirror, reflect the exact cost of what 
the average workman thinks he must eat and drink 
and wear and have. And so the passing days are 
desecrated, useless toil producing useless things, — 
implements of war, patent medicines, advertising 
novelties, Saturday night shoes, velveteens, and 
bangles. And the working people, with their great 
possibilities of achievement, the very bulk of the 
world's population, have produced nothing admir- 
able, no monument of loving workmanship, and 
no great show of character. The simple plan of 
making production as great as wholesomely may be, 
and consumption as small as wholesomely may be, 
and then devoting the large spare time to nobler 
human uses, this plan has not been tried, and is 
not possible so long as the world's industry is run 
on the motive of profit and not on the motive of 
human development and human wealth. It is this 
constant defeating of the high purposes of life by 
our present unsocial industrialism which forces an 
educator to take definite position on social ques- 
tions, even had he not been forced to it by the 
initial, logical necessity of formulating the social 
purpose to be carried out by his educational pro- 
cess. 



CAUSE AND EFFECT 141 

The plan of organic education is much like the 
plan of these occasional wise men who decline 
the reputed necessaries of life, and insist upon 
the true luxuries. It cuts out as much of the use- 
less as possible. It does not store up heterogene- 
ous facts with an assiduity which would make it 
seem as if books and libraries were not safe store- 
houses for them. It is not commercial and pru- 
dential. It makes no explicit preparation for the 
future. It dispenses with many of the present 
reputed necessaries of education, and frankly in- 
sists upon what is commonly considered a luxury, 
upon culture, the study and pursuit of perfection. 
It dares to set up and to defend against all comers 
the simple thesis that the one object in life worthy 
of serious pursuit is human strength and beauty 
and accomplishment and goodness. It dares to 
set this up for boys as well as for girls, for poor 
people as well as for rich people, for age as well 
as for youth. It rates this human object so high 
that the unsocial pursuit of lands and houses and 
stocks and gold becomes an open act of sacrilege. 
And when this pursuit is carried out at a human 
cost, at the cost of others' health and honor and 
life, it becomes an offense so grave as to be a 
blasphemy, as to rank with the unpardonable sin. 

This is a heresy, deeper than one at first im- 
agines, for if we had the love and courage to live 
up to it, it would quite transfigure the earth. There 
are signs in the air that we shall soon be living up 
to it. We are beginning in places to do it already, 



142 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

here and there in America and in England and in 
those fortunate isles where it is also believed as a 
reality of experience that the world might be a 
fair place ; that its wealth is human, and is made 
up of beautiful men and beautiful women and 
beautiful children, and of nothing less superb than 
this. It is a deep heresy, for if one really accepted 
it and lived up to it along the lines of cause and 
effect, that is to say, lived up to it practically, one 
would consent to no spending of the days which 
made one poorer humanly, however great the wage, 
and one would consent to no such desecration for 
the neighbor. 

There is a dramatic incident in the reported 
life of David which I much like to dwell upon. 
He was fighting the Philistines, after the savage 
manner of his time, and was hard pressed near the 
Cave of Adullam. The day was warm, and David 
spake longingly of the pure cold water in the well 
at the gate of his city of Bethlehem. In an in- 
stant three of his men broke through the ranks of 
the Philistines, drew water from the well, and bare 
the water back to David. It was a stirring thing 
to do, noble service, bravely rendered. And David 
took the water and poured it out on the ground as 
an offering to the Eternal One. It had been won 
at the risk of human life. The cost was too great, 
David could not drink. 

In modern life we have not yet the love and 
courage to decline the goods won at the too great 
cost of health and honor and happiness. And this 



CAUSE AND EFFECT 143 

is the human cost of much that is in the market. 
But to this inconvenience, if inconvenience one is 
pleased to call it, a practical belief in human 
wealth and in the sacredness of human excellence 
brings us. 

The kindergarten and the manual training school, 
and the kindred institutions already mentioned, 
have this practical belief in the surpassing worth 
of human excellence. In this they are philosophic. 
They do not always live up to their philosophy, 
and perhaps the older schools of art and music 
and gymnastic do not quite subscribe to it as the 
issue of paramount importance. They still work 
too much as if art were an end in itself, apart from 
the artist ; and music an end in itself, regard- 
less of the singer ; and the human body something 
admirable untouched by the human spirit. But 
art and music and gymnastic are increasingly tak- 
ing their place alongside of the kindergarten and 
manual training as means of culture rather than 
as ends of culture, and in this they are being hu- 
manized. In all these institutions of organic train- 
ing we find, too, the practical attempt to carry the 
principle of cause and effect into definite educa- 
tional action, and in this they are artistic. Each 
one of these schools has made its distinct contribu- 
tion. In each one we shall find some strength and 
some weakness. In attempting to develop a more 
complete scheme of education, it will evidently be 
the beginning of wisdom to examine very carefully 
into these older schemes of organic culture, so that 



144 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

we may take advantage of their merit and escape 
the penalty of their defect. 

In the kindergarten we find a supreme source of 
strength in its recognition of the source of power, 
the emotional life, the first full and ample recogni- 
tion anywhere in education. Froebel is everywhere 
full of it. He abounds in such expressions as 
" the inner impulse," " the impulse to play," " self- 
activity," and the like. They were such realities 
to him that, in the true artist-spirit of adjusting 
means to ends, he went to work to devise a system 
of child education which should be built up on the 
emotional life. The kindergarten is the first scheme 
of child culture which is truly psychological. All 
others have been founded more or less upon the 
idea of compulsion, of force, and have grown out 
of a totally different philosophy of life. Our 
own gentle ancestors, who believed, it may be re- 
membered, that the sins to which children are 
especially prone are ungodliness, profaneness, and 
self-sufficiency, must have sought, if they were at 
all consistent, to cure such serious defects by 
measures equally serious. Education meant to 
them, as it does still to many of their descendants, 
and to all believers in the cheerless doctrine of 
total depravity and the old Adam, a system of un- 
tiring and thoroughgoing repression. In a garden 
more thickly planted with tares than with wheat, 
they were not willing, like the good husbandman 
in the parable, to let both come to the harvest, but 
were forever trying to defeat the enemy, and, as a 



CAUSE AND EFFECT 145 

result, they pulled up much of the wheat. Per- 
haps the best chapters in our colonial history are 
those delightful ones which tell of the triumph 
of practice over theory. One might almost say 
that the main virtue of the Puritans was their 
failure to be consistent. But Froebel had the 
seeing eye. He saw the unity of man, and every- 
where insists upon its major importance. He saw 
the source of power, the inner impulse, and al- 
ways heeded it. He accepted in part the Socratic 
view of vice and virtue, without, perhaps, being 
quite conscious of his acceptance or of the origin 
of the view. It is indeed marvelous that one 
man, quite by himself, should have worked out so 
much of vital truth in education. He may well be 
called the Emancipator of Childhood. Froebel's 
system grew out of his experience. He was not a 
closet philosopher, an astronomer who had never 
seen the stars. He noticed the children at their 
play, noticed its spontaneity, noticed the charming 
touch of sentiment and fancy which they import 
into all their self-devised activities. Many, doubt- 
less, had noticed these same things before, and the 
large good which came out of them ; but apparently 
no one had been practical enough or interested 
enough to seize upon this play impulse as a cause, 
and make still larger and more helpful results flow 
out of it. The ungainly, benignant figure, watch- 
ing the children at their play, believing rigidly in 
cause and effect, a philosopher, acting rigidly on the 
principle of cause and effect, an artist, doubtless 



146 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

seemed to his day and generation a sorry sort of 
dreamer, and not very likely to make any contribu- 
tion of moment to the progress of the hour. But 
it turned out that he was the practical man, the 
causationist, and they were the false dreamers. It 
is impossible to picture anything more genuine and 
alert than children at their play, and here, if any- 
where, the sympathetic observer ought to be able 
to get at the secret of child education. It seems 
to me, then, the supreme source of strength in the 
kindergarten, and the service for which we owe it 
reverence, that it made education an inner process, 
a self-activity, a redemption, in place of an out- 
wardly imposed discipline and repression ; that it 
built its method upon a conception of human 
unity ; and, finally, that it carried out its purpose 
through the free play of the inner impulse. Prac- 
tically, the kindergarten is a system of sense cul- 
ture through the healthful play of the emotions. It 
is activity touched with sentiment. 

The weakness in the kindergarten seems to me 
in not carrying the principle of cause and effect to 
logical completeness. As a system of organic cul- 
ture, it ought to concern itself with the health of 
the child ; with his life conditions, his food and 
dress and sleep and exercise and baths ; with the 
atmosphere in which he lives outside the kinder- 
garten ; with the condition of his sense organs, 
eye and ear and nose and nervous system gener- 
ally, for upon these the child's progress towards 
perfection depends, quite as much as upon the 



CAUSE AND EFFECT 147 

directed play in the kindergarten itself. Perhaps 
it would sum up the matter to say that in order to 
accomplish its full purpose of human renovation, 
the kindergarten must concern itself with twenty- 
four hours in place of three, and must consider the 
organism as a whole. 

In sloyd and in educational manual training 
generally, we have one of the most promising ef- 
forts that has been made to realize organic edu- 
cation. The purpose is human development, and 
the method is strictly causational. It is the pe- 
culiar strength of sloyd that it, too, has realized 
the source of power in the emotional life of chil- 
dren and has made this an integral part of its 
method. Nothing seems to me quite so refreshing 
in all our educational provisions as the naive con- 
ditions imposed in Sweden on the introduction of 
the sloyd wood work. If the work is desired at 
any given school, say a district school where there 
is but one teacher, the authorities do not, as 
with us, decree that the subject shall be taught, 
but they inquire whether the teacher believes in 
sloyd, and this belief is held to be the first re- 
quisite condition. And the second condition is 
equally delightful. When the sloyd has been in- 
troduced, only those children may take it who 
want to take it, who choose it quite voluntarily. 
Given a teacher who believes in sloyd and children 
who want to take it, one can easily imagine what 
fine results are possible. 

Discriminating critics of that older manual train- 



148 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

ing which came to us from Kussia have pointed 
out that in giving children a course of prescribed 
and abstract exercises in wood and metal, we are 
allowing no greater play of self -activity and spon- 
taneous impulse than if the prescribed course were 
in language or mathematics. This criticism is per- 
fectly just and still applies to much that is being 
done in even the so-called educational manual train- 
ing. 

In sloyd, as in the kindergarten, there is a pro- 
found belief in the unity of man. The changes 
which it attempts to set up in the organism are 
prompted by that abiding impulse towards perfec- 
tion which is the motive power of all education. 
The emotional life is enlisted in the work by a 
frank appeal to the interest and the affection of 
the children. Each piece of work is a finished 
article, however simple it may be, something that 
the child can use and care for. As far as possi- 
ble, he is allowed to choose what he will make, so 
that he can put his whole heart and interest into 
the work. It is also possible, by suggesting arti- 
cles which may afterwards form suitable gifts for 
the father or the mother, to touch the work with a 
generous and loving sentiment. The educational 
effort involved in sloyd does not end here ; it pro- 
vides that the work shall be carried out on strict 
physiological principles, shall be indeed a direct 
form of gymnastic, quite as much as direct culture 
of the hand and eye. Furthermore, part of the 
models involve ample freehand work, so as to cul- 



CAUSE AND EFFECT 149 

tivate the sense of form and make the judgment 
as free as possible from the necessity of mechanical 
tests. Finally, it is sought to make all the models 
rich in the simple beauty which comes from good 
proportion rather than from decoration. The task 
proposed for itself by sloyd is exceedingly subtle, 
to engage the interest and spontaneity and affec- 
tion of a child, to cultivate the sense of beauty and 
the finer sense of touch, to increase the general 
bodily health and poise, and finally, throughout all 
the work, by the directed and purposeful overcom- 
ing of the resistance of the material, to give power 
of brain and skill of hand. It is a psychological 
programme and a long one, but sloyd accomplishes 
it successfully just in proportion to its practical 
fidelity to the principle of cause and effect. 

In the manual training first introduced into this 
country from Russia, both motive and method were 
different. This was in 1876. The motive was 
technical, the cultivation of a dexterity which 
might afterwards be applied in industrial opera- 
tions. The methods were those which were thought 
to be best adapted to the bread-and-butter problem. 
It may be remarked in passing that the term edu- 
cational is often applied to this earlier technical 
work, and was sincerely applied by the people who 
introduced it, but they meant something quite dif- 
ferent from what is meant when the term is used 
in the present volume. As opposed to factory work, 
to the making of something which would have a 
direct market value, the work was industrially edu- 



150 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

cative rather than industrially productive, and the 
earlier teachers of manual training devised abstract 
joints and exercises in order to emphasize this dif- 
ference. They feared that the schools might some- 
time become factories, and start out on the danger- 
ous road of self-support. 

But the real difference is more profound than 
this. 

The earlier manual training was undertaken in 
order to give a skill of hand which might after- 
wards be used in industry. The later, or educa- 
tional manual training, is undertaken in order to 
give a skill of organism to be used in life. The 
one motive is technical: the other is human. The 
method used in technical manual training is natu- 
rally quite different from the method used in sloyd 
and educational manual training, for it is after a 
quite different result. The technical method does 
not concern itself with the interest and spontaneity 
and affection of the boy. It makes little attempt 
to have its exercises teach beauty or the finer sense 
of form. It is carried out in rooms that are light 
and wholesome, but it is in no sense gymnastic. It 
makes no direct provision for increasing the bodily 
health or poise. Even as a strictly bread-and-but- 
ter study the technical training would do better to 
concern itself with these human matters ; for, as we 
have been pointing out all along, it is the excellent 
man who produces the excellent work. 

We may then count the technical manual train- 
ing as a very partial contribution to organic educa- 



CAUSE AND EFFECT 151 

tion, while we must count the educational hand- 
work as a very large contribution. Both forms o£ 
training fulfill the partial ends proposed for them- 
selves. As far as they go, they are excellent. 
They are open to criticism when they are applied 
as if fulfilling the full programme of human needs. 
The involved culture of the hand and eye, and of 
the brain centres back of the hand and eye, is a 
large part of organic education, but it must not be 
mistaken for the whole. In addition there must be 
the cultivation of the other senses, especially the 
ear and voice in speech and song and music ; there 
must be an adequate gymnastic for the develop- 
ment of general bodily power ; there must be an 
education in art, and finally there must be efficient 
drill in verbal expression. It is only when joined 
to all these things and to a sincere cultivation of 
the higher sentiments, that manual training may be 
said to offer a coherent scheme of culture. Taken 
alone, it is only one out of a number of elements 
of culture, very valuable and full of promise, but 
still only a part. 

If we turn now to the art schools of the country 
and ask what human lesson they have to suggest, we 
find them in places doing magnificent work in the 
cultivation of the eye and the hand just as the 
sloyd schools are doing magnificent work in the cul- 
tivation of the hand and the eye. But the art 
schools are far less human in their motive and far 
less true in their method. In looking at them as 
they exist to-day, one is much more struck with 



152 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

their human weakness than with their human 
strength. The defect in the majority of art schools 
is vital. They are working for a technical end 
quite as truly as the technical manual training 
schools are. They propose art as an end, as a pro- 
fession, as a thing for-men and women to do. They 
ignore, in the main, the vastly greater end, the hu- 
man end. As a result, we have many paintings but 
little art work. It is the wrong method, even if 
art were the end. As an old lady of my acquaint- 
ance once remarked, " You can't get more out of 
people, my dear, than there is in them." That this 
is vitally true, we seem to be forever forgetting. 
True art is the overflow of a radiant spirit, and the 
growth of art in any community depends, not only 
on the number of workers, but also on the num- 
ber of appreciative on-lookers, creators of an atmo- 
sphere favorable to the art spirit. 

Probably to no country do lovers of the beauti- 
ful look with such wistful eyes as to Japan. There, 
one sees, or fancies that one sees, a nation which is 
truly esthetic, or which has been in the not very 
distant past. At first it seems to be a merely 
decorative art. It concerns itself with costume 
and ceremonial and flower arrangement and domes- 
tic architecture and landscape gardening, and with 
the utensils and apparatus of daily life. It seems 
something less ideal and elevated than the western 
art of the gallery and museum. But when you come 
to think about it, this eastern idea is the true one, 
the idea of having art minister to the daily esthetic 



CAUSE AND EFFECT 153 

needs rather than to intermittent esthetic duty. 
I cannot but feel, with all due respect to modern 
knowledge, that the Japanese maiden arranging her 
chrysanthemums so that they will be an object of 
human delight, is rendering, in that particular at 
least, a truer and more beautiful service than the 
western girl microscopically hunting for some new 
variety of worm. You remember, perhaps, that fine 
incident of the cloissonne maker who brought his 
wares to one of the earlier Paris expositions, and 
sold them to such excellent advantage that he 
found himself quite unexpectedly in possession of 
fifty thousand dollars. He was warmly congratu- 
lated, and it was suggested to him that he could 
now enlarge his factory, and with a market already 
eager, he could soon make a fortune. But his reply 
was something better than that. It was that his 
ware would become inferior if he turned it out 
in such large quantity, that he would spend the 
money, rather, in creating a beautiful garden around 
his workshop, and that his work-people, in the 
midst of this encircling beauty, would then pro- 
duce still more beautiful ware. 

Our lives are enriched, not by having a wealth 
of bric-a-brac about us, but, rather, by the posses- 
sion of a few really beautiful objects which we 
have the open eye to see and appropriate. 

It seems to me that the weakness in the art 
schools lies in focusing their attention so exclu- 
sively upon the work. Their redemption will come 
when they turn to human life and make art a 



154 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

means instead of an end. The current methods 
have the same defect that the motive has. They are 
largely prescribed, systematized, made mechanical 
and objective. They are not practical and causa- 
tional, like the methods of the kindergarten and 
sloyd. And the method reaches its extreme chilli- 
ness when art students are taught how to teach art. 
The defect in method will be remedied when the 
motive is humanized. Even now, the fact that art 
study is prompted by a feeling for the beautiful 
makes the effort to systematize and formalize it 
less efficient and less harmful than it would be 
working on less emotional material. The contribu- 
tion of the art school to organic education may not 
be considered more than incidental, a by-product 
of sight and handicraft in the main process of 
turning out what are meant to be art goods. The- 
oretically, the effect of such special culture could 
not be otherwise than very partial, and practi- 
cally, we find it to have just this defect. The art 
student is not more charming and more beautiful 
than other partialists. Too often the fragmentary 
nature of his culture makes him less charming and 
less beautiful. 

To be critical in musical matters seems like car- 
rying criticism to the very gates of Paradise. It 
is, perhaps, allowable if one does it in the hope of 
opening the gates. To be an artist in music re- 
quires an amount of organic power which stamps 
its possessor at once as a genius. To sing is to 
have a rarely disciplined throat and ear, and if the 



CAUSE AND EFFECT 155 

singing be from notes, to add to this a quick, per- 
ceiving eye. To play a musical instrument is to 
have the ear and eye and the long-fingered wonder- 
working hand. To this we must add an obedient 
foot, if the instrument be supplied with pedals. 
Few acts of the artist-life require such fine co- 
ordination of faculty as the playing of a modern, 
triple-keyboard, many-stopped organ. In the schools 
of music, music is pursued as an end. If it be 
composition, the result is a definite, finished pro- 
duct. If it be performance, it is an organic state, 
and therefore necessarily a partial human end. 
But this end is incidental. It is only that we may 
have the music, and not that we may have the 
accomplished, beautiful organism. The schools of 
music have not produced great artists. They have 
helped artists who had power and who might 
have been great anyway. And when you think of 
the great number of young people in this country 
who have had persistent musical instruction along 
these technical lines, and have never become the 
slenderest of musicians, the army of women who 
have studied the piano for years, and have never 
produced a single great composition, or even at- 
tained distinction as performers, who from begin- 
ning to end " never let their left hand know what 
their right hand doeth," a doubt will obtrude itself 
as to whether the motive and the method are not in 
some respects faulty. 

The point of attack wants to be changed. It 
wants to be made human, and to have regard mainly 



156 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

to the musician. We can afford to have the music 
the incident. No one object of human pursuit de- 
mands so complete an organic training as music, 
and were it pursued as a human end, for its effect 
upon the human person, it could be made a tre- 
mendous contribution to organic culture. With 
this change of motive, there would, as in the art 
world, be a distinct change of method. It is im- 
possible to teach music to any one who does not 
want to learn, and only commercial pressure could 
make a true musician attempt so unattractive a 
task. When music is taught as a human art, as a 
contribution to human perfection, and not as an 
end in itself, something that may be had for a fee, 
it will only consent to carry on its work along the 
lines of cause and effect ; that is to say, through 
the interest and spontaneity and affection of the 
learner. It will be given as an agent of culture, 
to increase the health and poise and sight and 
hearing and voice and touch, the organic human 
power of those whose high privilege it is to learn 
music, and to offer them a superb medium for 
the expression of the profound aspirations of the 
spirit. 

In the gymnasiums of the country we have two 
distinct institutions as unlike as possible in both 
their motive and their method. Like the music 
schools and art schools and manual training schools 
and kindergartens, both types of gymnasium are 
given to organic culture, but they make very un- 
equal contributions. The older type of gymnasium 



CAUSE AND EFFECT 157 

is a place where the body is cultivated as a thing in 
itself, either for the performance of some athletic 
feat, — this used to be the sole office of the college 
gymnasium, — or for the sake of bodily exercise in 
some particular direction. The newer type of gym- 
nasium is quite a different place, and the system of 
instruction is quite different. This is notably true 
of Swedish gymnastic. In this newer type, gym- 
nastic is taken in the best sense that the Greeks 
took it, as a means of increasing the health and 
poise and power of mankind. The method of this 
gymnastic is very simple. It uses little apparatus, 
and may even be carried on without any whatever. 
All it requires is a large open floor or a hard dirt 
court. Bars and ladders and wooden horses are 
used where available, but they are not essential. 
The system is primarily a scheme for general 
bodily exercise prompted by individual will power. 
It seeks to cultivate the will through the greater 
control of the body. It is, indeed, a system of 
carefully thought out organic education. Like all 
true sense culture, it belongs more properly under 
the head of mental culture than under the head 
of what is commonly meant by physical culture. 
Notice some of its fundamental principles. It 
dispenses with music, because the rhythm then be- 
comes the guiding factor in place of the human 
will. It dispenses with all action on the part of 
the instructor during the class movement, for this 
would substitute imitation for the directing power 
of the will. Both of these provisions are very 



158 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

subtle, and they do accomplish their purpose. The 
movement is explained and illustrated by the in- 
structor, and each child knows perfectly what is to 
be done. But he must do it himself, of his own 
volition, and quite unaided by music or model. 
All commands are short and clear, so that they 
may reach the intelligence with the utmost direct- 
ness and speed. The response must be equally 
quick and direct. The first command — " Atten- 
tion ! " — asks that the faculties be alert and ready 
to act, and the body in a suitable position of van- 
tage. The second command names the part of the 
body to be called into action. The third com- 
mand tells the direction of motion. The last com- 
mand describes the motion and calls for it. Thus : 
"Attention — right leg — upward — bend ! " Each 
word is spoken quickly and distinctly. The exer- 
cise is not only meant to develop the body through 
the muscular exertion required, but still more to 
develop the power of command. The exercises are 
all light, and the majority of them would scarcely 
bring fatigue if persisted in for considerable periods 
of time. But where the system is well carried out, 
and the commands follow one another in fairly 
rapid succession, mental fatigue comes before mus- 
cular fatigue, and indicates very positively where 
the work is being done. The whole purpose of the 
Swedish drill is to increase the health of the body, 
to make it alert, quick, usable ; above all, to put it 
under the absolute control of the will. To do this 
is to practically follow out the principle of cause 



CAUSE AND EFFECT 159 

and effect. It adds immensely to the charm and 
the success of life, and so makes a large contribu- 
tion towards the quest for perfection. It gives one 
a resourceful feeling that the body is ready to do 
the bidding of the mind, is indeed a well-trained 
servant, untiring and devoted. Viewed from the 
point of view of organic education, the strength 
of the Swedish system lies in this, that it does 
make the body a very much more effective tool for 
carrying out the admirable purposes of the mind. 
It offers a general increase of power, and does not 
pretend to the culture of any particular faculty or 
sense. Its purpose is partial, but such as it is, it 
performs it. And this service is of the utmost im- 
portance, since, as we have seen, it is the founda- 
tion for all subsequent special sense culture. 

The object in thus passing in review the per- 
formance of the kindergarten, the educational work- 
shop, the studio, the conservatory, and the gymna- 
sium has been to point out their strength and their 
defect when viewed as possible processes for the 
carrying out of the social purpose. It is manifest 
that they all fail in this, that not one of them 
works out the principle of cause and effect to its 
logical completeness, that is, to a process covering 
twenty-four hours ; not one of them makes good 
health an absolutely unavoidable result ; not one 
of them has a compelling word to say about food 
and drink and dress and baths and sleep and open 
air and fun and love. It must be borne in mind 
that they do not pretend to. The contention is 



160 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

merely that it is only by such pretension, and a 
practical making good of the pretension, that the 
social purpose can be realized. Organic education 
must cover the whole twenty-four hours, the whole 
year, the whole lifetime, and must have added to 
it such abstract training in language and science 
and mathematics as careful examination shows to 
be salutary, if it is to be the accepted process for 
the production of the people of power, men and 
women who are strong and beautiful and accom- 
plished and good. 

If we acted out the principle of cause and effect, 
I have said that we would be artists ; and in no 
department of human effort would it be so alto- 
gether interesting and profitable to be an artist as 
in this most important of all social operations, the 
realizing of the social ideal. Our failure to act 
causationally results from our deficient belief in 
cause and effect. We are not philosophers, even 
in education, one of the most ideal of our pursuits, 
and this means that in spite of all our boasting we 
are not yet a practical people. When it comes to 
the very obvious and unimportant things, to money- 
getting and shop-keeping and stock-jobbing and 
out-racing and over-dimensioning the rest of the 
world generally, we seem to have considerable turn 
for the practical, though even here I am told that 
ninety-seven per cent, of our business men sooner 
or later meet with failure. It must be humiliating 
to go in for such a minor end as money and then 
not get it. But in the more important affairs of 



CAUSE AND EFFECT 161 

the hour, the gentle art of living, the vastly signi- 
ficant process of educating, we are hardly causa- 
tionists at all, but out-and-out dreamers ; with small 
turn for the practical, and quite deserving all the 
reproach which the doubters are so ready to throw 
at us. 

The first concern of a practical educational sys- 
tem should be with the life conditions. These are 
now left in part to the home, in large part to 
chance. To be sure, every careful mother tries to 
work them out to the best of her ability. But 
look what a tremendous task we are putting upon 
her, a task that would tax the wisest specialist. 
It would be far more reasonable to ask the care- 
ful mother to give her children the elementary 
English branches at home, for these are much more 
manageable than the questions which we do leave 
to her. Then, too, the mass of mothers are not 
practically careful and they are not practically in- 
telligent. The very children who start out with 
least in the matter of heredity get least under our 
present system in the way of efficient culture. In 
Greece they were more practical than this. At 
its best, education covered twenty-four hours. This 
is the first work to be done by practical organic 
education, to investigate and make known just 
these simple matters of daily living, — the sort of 
food and drink which will give the best results in 
the way of nutrition and growth ; the sort of dress 
which will give the amount of protection needed, 
and still permit a wholesome freedom of motion 



162 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

and allow the air and sunshine to strengthen and 
vivify the little bodies ; the kind of baths which 
are best for children, the temperature, the number 
a day, the proper hour ; the amount of sleep which 
is needed ; the physical and intellectual atmo- 
sphere which should surround the child, and, finally, 
the sort of play and spontaneous occupation which 
ought most to be encouraged. It is unreasonable 
to expect a young mother, herself quite unin- 
structed in even the rudiments of science, to meet 
these difficult questions successfully ; and with our 
present commercial spending of the days, the fa- 
thers do not at all count in such matters. 

For this reason, it often happens that boys sent 
to good boarding-schools turn out the stronger men, 
for these all-important life problems have to be 
faced there, and some solution reached. 

Just in proportion as we believe in the unity of 
man and the principle of causation, are we bound 
to see to it that the human organism is wholesome 
and well nourished, before we may, with any de- 
gree of success, start out upon the work of special 
development, which is commonly supposed to be the 
sole function of the school. 

This constant appeal to the agency and test of 
causation is prompted by an intense desire to get 
at the practical things in education, and to make 
it a vital, effective process. If we want the seeing 
eye and hearing ear and trained voice and discrim- 
inating touch and taste and smell ; if we want 
good red blood and high spirit and serene poise ; 



CAUSE AND EFFECT 163 

if we want charm and accomplishment and beauty ; 
if we want a warm and generous and reverent 
heart ; in a word, if we want human wealth, then 
we must set to work and strive for these things, 
and as a practical people we must work along the 
line of cause and effect, by employing agencies 
which are adequate to bring about the desired 
results. 

It requires character to be moral, and it requires 
intelligence. The decalogue represents a sturdy, 
primitive sort of morality which the world can 
never afford to disregard. The nations which 
have been true to this code have had their reward, 
a reward of physical health and well-being which 
have led to dominion and power. But the deca- 
logue is at its best when it is taken as the founda- 
tion of morality and not at all as the full super- 
structure. To satisfy the demands of the modern 
moral life, our code must be touched with the 
spirit of a new commandment, and must have 
added to it that impulse towards perfection which 
gives to morality the positive element of an ever- 
present and ever - progressive obligation. It is 
more inexorable than anything ever written on 
tables of stone. It requires not only that we shall 
entertain lofty ideals, but quite as rigidly that we 
shall attain them. Otherwise, the torch is handed 
to another and a worthier keeper. We must pro- 
pose to ourselves attainable ends. The unattain- 
able end is a simple absurdity which can possess 
charm only for the sentimentalists, and these peo- 



164 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

pie, as we all know, are never moral. The attain- 
able end represents a failure, an out-and-out im- 
morality if it is not reached. In a word, morality- 
is a practical operation and not an idle sentiment. 
The bad son who said he would n't and did, is 
counted better than the good son who said he 
would and did n't. Morality is only satisfied by 
success. This may seem a hard saying, but it is 
literally true. The good farmer is not the one 
who raises poor crops. The good engineer is not 
the one whose structures collapse. The good cap- 
tain is not the one who runs his ship on the rocks. 
The good doctor is not the one who kills his pa- 
tients. Neither, let us forever bear in mind, is the 
good man the one who misses living the good life. 
Success is the measure of goodness. Morality, 
which has to do with right living, is only satisfied 
by right living. The most evolved conduct, as 
Mr. Spencer has pointed out, is the conduct in 
which means are most perfectly adapted to ends, 
that is to say, conduct marked by just this quality, 
the quality of succeeding. So the philosopher-art- 
ist is the only truly moral person, and he is moral 
because as philosopher he has a rigid belief in 
cause and effect, and as artist he has the rigid 
habit of carrying cause and effect into action. 

A faith so sturdy as this may not be held by 
weaklings. It is the faith of the men and women 
of power. Failure is only another name for im- 
morality. Human failure means human immoral- 
ity. The absence of health and strength and 



CAUSE AND EFFECT 165 

beauty and wisdom and accomplishment and lov- 
ableness is a moral delinquency. It means that 
that impulse towards perfection, which alone makes 
human life significant and divine, has either been 
denied altogether, or else that as a plan of life it 
has been so feebly handled as to come to nothing. 
To be moral is to be practical ; to be practical is to 
succeed. As idealists are the really practical peo- 
ple of the world, they are obliged to look upon the 
process of education as a human adventure in which 
they dare not fail. The social purpose is a practical, 
attainable end, and consequently the educational 
process is moral only as it accomplishes this end. 

To those who love the things of the spirit, and 
who delight in the intellectual life, this frank and 
practical proposition to save man through the puri- 
fication and regeneration of his organism means 
much more than the mere production of so many 
clever, healthy animals. It means essentially the 
redemption of the spirit, for the two go hand in 
hand. One end cannot be realized without the 
other. Although we discarded dualism in the very 
first chapter, as a view of the world not borne out 
by experience, I cannot forbear returning to it a 
moment in order to suggest that the older plan of 
spiritualizing the world along dualistic lines has 
signally failed. It is perfectly true that the body 
wars against the spirit, but this is not because 
they have a dissimilar course to run ; it is because 
they have a common destiny, and any misadventure 
with the body means a corresponding misadventure 



106 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

with the spirit. The way out of the difficulty is 
not the dualistic way of still further maltreating 
the body, but the monistic way of redeeming and 
perfecting the body. Nor can I forbear to suggest 
once more that the things of the spirit can only 
express themselves through the rich imagery of 
the senses, that the delight in the intellectual life 
is but a delight in the symbolism of the world- 
life. After all, the intellectual life is but a reflec- 
tion of the sincere passion of experienced life, a 
representation. The reality is the passion itself. 
To attain human wealth we want to put into daily 
life itself those elements which make art and lit- 
erature glorious, and to turn increasingly from art 
and literature to life. Eeality is better than repre- 
sentation ; life at first hand, warm, glowing, beau- 
tiful human life, is better than any picture of it. 



CHAPTER VI 

CHILDHOOD 

If we believe that the wealth of the world is 
human, that it consists of beautiful men and beau- 
tiful women and beautiful children, people of 
accomplishment and goodness and power; if we 
believe in cause and effect, and are consequently 
practical people, with a turn for making our plans 
come true, then the educational process which is 
to carry into effect this magnificent social creed 
must be a thoroughly practical process which will 
keep this end resolutely in mind, and will as reso- 
lutely work for its accomplishment. 

Just as the social purpose covers the whole of 
life and includes all citizens, so the educational 
process must cover the whole of life, and include 
all citizens. Human life is a continuous experience 
from the moment of parental conception to the 
moment of withdrawal from the visible world. So 
far as we know, birth and death are the only abrupt 
crises in this human experience, and even these are 
only apparently abrupt. There are many phases 
in the experience as a whole, but they fade into one 
another very, very gradually. The educational 
process, to be true to its high end, must have the 



168 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

same continuity and the same gentle passage. We 
may, however, without violence, count childhood as 
a distinct period if we are careful to make its clos- 
ing characteristic the initial characteristic of the 
succeeding period of youth. 

As human life responds to the ideal of a progres- 
sive perfection, its span must increase both in point 
of actual years and in the richness of their con- 
tent. This will make each period of life corre- 
spondingly longer. As the possibilities of life grow 
strong and fine, it requires distinctly greater peri- 
ods of time to do even half justice to their poten- 
tial content. As the human vista broadens and 
lengthens, there is an over-spilling of the days of 
childhood. And why, indeed, should we wish to 
compress and contract anything so altogether charm- 
ing? From a human standpoint there is no reason. 
Ample childhood makes rich youth, and rich youth 
glorious manhood, and these, taken together, form 
the perfect life. From a commercial standpoint 
this is of course very bad doctrine. It diminishes 
the cheap, underpaid labor of the world by with- 
drawing children from the service of profit. Then, 
too, competition is so keen that those who want to 
come to the top in the commercial caldron feel 
that they must begin early and work up. One 
hates the very phrase, this beginning early and 
working up, for it has turned many a human pro- 
mise into human failure. It seems to me, then, that 
from our ampler human view it is not too much to 
count the first fifteen years of life as the dear pos- 



CHILDHOOD 169 

session of childhood, and to treat these years frankly 
as the golden age of innocence. 

There is also a deep biological reason for making 
such a division. Of the five phases in the life- 
history of the human organism, — birth, nutrition, 
growth, reproduction, and death, — childhood cov- 
ers the whole of birth, both pre-natal and the early 
years of post-natal existence, the period of most ac- 
tive nutrition, and by far the greater part of growth. 
At birth the average child weighs about eight 
pounds. By his fifteenth birthday he will weigh in 
the neighborhood of a hundred pounds, an increase 
of at least twelvefold. During all the rest of life 
the increase will be hardly twofold. Roughly 
speaking, the human organism attains one half its 
growth in one fifth of its life, and the other half, 
at unequal and, in the main, at diminishing rate, 
during the remaining four fifths. Childhood is 
marked by tremendous physical activity, and the 
educational process must build itself upon this 
as a fact of major importance. Childhood may 
properly cover the whole of life up to the beginning 
of the development of the. reproductive functions. 
The process of childhood must concern itself phy- 
sically with birth, nutrition, and growth ; it must 
concern itself intellectually with the awakening of 
the spirit, its nourishment and expansion. 

The real culture of a human organism begins 
years back in the lives of the boy and girl who 
later enter into parenthood, just as their life cul- 
ture had still earlier origin. In every wholesome 



170 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

organism the instinct of reproduction, the instinct 
of race-preservation, is as natural as the instinct 
of self-preservation, and we are poor philosophers 
if we ignore this vital fact. Both instincts have 
led to cruelty and disorder. But both instincts are 
necessary, and are capable, therefore, of the highest 
idealization. In the following pages, the question 
of reproduction will be dealt with not as a mis- 
fortune, a savage force which we would do much 
better without, but in what is believed to be the 
far more wholesome spirit, as a distinct good for- 
tune, as a social force which may be wholly be- 
nignant and human. From the point of view of 
perfection, the quest of that which is excellent and 
beautiful, the office of parenthood is a very sacred 
office, which may not lightly be entered upon, or 
even entered upon at all by those who are dis- 
qualified. A wedding ceremony does not consti- 
tute the qualification. It is much more organic 
than that. In our more complex societies we have 
created a very deep sentiment that children may 
not be born out of wedlock, and as a social safe- 
guard it has been in part successful ; but, like the 
Decalogue, this is only a foundation of morality, 
and not at all the full measure of the spirit. We 
must create the far more important sentiment that 
only those may enter into wedlock who have the 
pure, fair bodies and the sound minds of accepta- 
ble parenthood. 

In this connection I should like to point out one 
form of marriage which is to-day making against the 



CHILDHOOD 171 

perfection of the individual life, and of the child- 
hood which is the offspring of such a union, — I 
mean the economic marriage, the marriage of a 
pure, fair woman with a man of unsuitable age and 
deficient soundness of organic tissue, and allowed 
for the simple reason that he can afford her ample 
financial support. Such an economic marriage 
represents a moral transgression on very Jiigh 
grounds. Yet it is sanctioned in families which 
nourish a high tradition of honor, and solemnized 
in churches which profess a high sense of religion. 

My own deep interest in that social reform which 
means, among other things, the entire liberation 
of woman and her economic and civil equality, 
through a wiser administration of the national re- 
sources, is prompted by a desire to see in her the 
sturdier life of a real independence, and to see also 
the purification of the race life at its very foun- 
tain, in the holy office of parenthood ; and this, I 
believe, will only come about when both men and 
women are economically independent. 

The culture of childhood, as a consciously di- 
rected process, should cover the period of gesta- 
tion, from conception to birth, quite as carefully as 
the first fifteen years of independent organic life. 
Every personal experience of any range whatever in- 
cludes a knowledge of some child dreadfully marred, 
perhaps wholly handicapped, by the unfavorable 
circumstances of its pre-natal life. Our knowledge 
has come largely through these disasters. But 
perhaps we shall be still more alert to the im- 



172 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

portance of such pre-natal influences, if we simply 
marshal the conditions before our eyes, eyes open 
to the principle of cause and effect, and then make 
sound application of our general knowledge. In 
the whole range of chemistry we do not find more 
complex, more unstable, organic material than this 
highly sensitive, highly organized, human embryo. 
It i& curiously open to every impression, to every 
influence. Even were it less impressionable through 
its own constitution, it is growing at a speed which 
makes it the scene of intense molecular activity, 
and hence singularly open to those more permanent 
molecular re-arrangements upon which the future 
condition of the organism so largely depends. At 
no other period in the life of the human organism 
do we have such altogether astonishing growth. 
In a period of about nine months, an almost micro- 
scopic egg, a germ only about the one twenty-fifth 
of an inch in diameter, develops into the relatively 
giant proportions of the human infant. These are 
quite familiar facts, but the thought is less familiar 
that as causationists in education, as people given 
over to the practical study and pursuit of perfec- 
tion, we are quite bound to give these vital facts 
very grave consideration when we come to the for- 
mulation of a thoroughgoing course of organic 
education. Just as the embryo, so fraught with 
human possibilities, is open to all sorts of harmful 
influences, so also is it open to all sorts of perfect- 
ing influences. The very sensitiveness which makes 
it so open to harm makes it equally open to good, 



CHILDHOOD 173 

and it is this very hopeful aspect of the case which 
positive education must seize upon. 

I am venturing to discuss questions which are 
commonly considered outside of the province of the 
educator, but their tremendous importance makes 
allowable my plain speech. 

The influences surrounding maternity must not 
only be guarded, — they must be carefully culti- 
vated. It is a field for the most beautiful and 
far-reaching work, the work of bringing beauty and 
health and serenity into the very organic fibre of 
the future men and women of the race. The im- 
pulse for this work must come from the heart of 
the mother, but it is an impulse which may be 
strengthened and instructed by the outspoken voice 
of the teacher, a voice which must proclaim, if 
need be, with the vehemence of an Isaiah, the 
double truth that ill-born children are ever a 
crime, that well-born children are ever a possibil- 
ity. This is the law. These considerations ought 
to make motherhood very sacred, a time for all 
gentleness and patience and love, a time for music 
and beauty and spiritual elevation of thought ; and 
this for the sake of both the mother and child, — for 
the mother who is to meet such tremendous suffer- 
ing as the price of renewed life, for the child who 
is to carry the impress of these influences through- 
out three-score years and ten. There is some 
prejudice against the public amelioration of the 
anguish of motherhood, through the establishment 
of maternity hospitals and the like, lest by reducing 



174 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

the suffering they may also reduce the incentives 
to domestic morality ; but such a supreme moment 
in the life of a fellow-being is not the time to 
ask questions. It is for society to reduce the 
temptations, the economic pressure which leads to 
vice, to lay its strong hand upon the libertine, 
the real offender, and not in cruelty to select the 
anguished mother as the instrument of its wrath. 
Whatever her guilt, she has in part atoned for it 
by a deeper suffering than men can ever know. 
And it must be remembered that the child at least 
is guiltless, and in the name of our common human- 
ity deserves to be ushered into the world under 
such conditions as will best further its subsequent 
life. 

Let me repeat it, that the concern of the utmost 
moment in the educational process of childhood is 
to see to it that children are well born. No after 
care and training can make the weakling strong. 
No subsequent neglect, short of absolute injury, 
can entirely rob the strong one of his strength. 
So vital are these considerations that, with the 
evolution of a keener social conscience, they must 
become incorporated into our marriage laws, just 
as they have already become incorporated into the 
private conscience of more evolved individuals. 

The first fifteen years of separate organic life 
are full of educational possibilities of the highest 
moment, possibilities which under our present ad- 
ministration of childhood are very commonly lost. 
We have still the highly sensitive organism in which 



CHILDHOOD 175 

to wrap up the accomplishments and powers of 
later life, and we have also the plasticity which 
comes with rapid growth ; when the molecules of 
the body are in a state of motion — and in children 
they are fairly dancing with activity — it is much 
easier to re-arrange them in predetermined patterns 
than when the molecules have the relative sluggish- 
ness which comes with more advanced years. I 
am very fond just here of an illustration borrowed 
from the engineering world, for it seems to me to 
drive the truth home with quite irresistible force. 
When a rod of iron is subjected to constant vibra- 
tion, as in a much-used bridge structure, it rapidly 
becomes crystalline, and must be replaced by more 
fibrous metal. Yet the same rod in the quiet of a 
warehouse would suffer no such molecular change. 
It is only when the molecules are in motion that the 
crystallizing forces have a chance to act. It is lit- 
erally the same with children. When the organism 
is rapidly changing, as it is during the whole period 
of normal childhood, it is wonderfully impressi- 
ble. When it ceases to change rapidly, it ceases 
to be readily impressible. Periods of arrested 
growth are marked by difficulty of organic acquire- 
ment. When the organism is too sluggish, certain 
arts are quite impossible. The mastery of the 
violin, as we all know, is entirely out of the ques- 
tion unless one begin even before the teens are 
reached. The art of swimming is very easy for a 
boy of ten, and exceedingly difficult for a man of 
thirty. Illustrating the same point, we find that 



176 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

older and more sluggish organisms rise to unwonted 
activity under stress of unusual conditions, — deaf 
people hear on a rapidly moving train ; dull men 
" rise to the occasion " and surprise themselves and 
their friends ; an excited author writes better than 
he knows how ; a man of deficient aural memory 
finds himself humming a tune, which he has al- 
lowed himself to beat time to by some bodily move- 
ment. So true is all this that one even reads on 
credible authority that a movement of the jaws, as 
in the mastication of dried figs or other difficult 
comestibles, is favorable to thought. I should be 
sorry, however, to have this argument used in sup- 
port of chewing-gum ! 

This sensitiveness and this mobility make the 
years of childhood the very most important years 
of all for the purposes of organic education. One 
could ask for no better material than normal, 
healthy childhood. 

The schemes of education which have every 
other merit but that of succeeding, commonly ex- 
cuse themselves by putting the blame on the chil- 
dren. If you at all remember that old-fashioned 
game of croquet, you will recall numbers of players 
who always charged defeat upon their mallets, and 
were forever trying new ones. The schools busily 
hunting for perfect children, and failing with those 
they have, are much in the position of these clumsy 
players. As long as the supply of new children 
keeps up, they can go on trying new mallets, but 
with precisely the same results. It seems to me 



CHILDHOOD 177 

that childhood is often slandered, when the real 
fault is in the educational process itself. What- 
ever the human material were, it is just this human 
material which education is called upon to work 
up, so that in any case a failure would mean fail- 
ure. But it means this in a double sense when 
you remember how excellent the average human 
material is, how plastic, how impressionable, how 
thoroughly vital. One could ask for nothing bet- 
ter. The whole question is one of method, what 
to do with this material. It is particularly impor- 
tant that the educational process of childhood shall 
be eminently successful, since the processes of all 
the later periods must wholesomely flow out of this 
and build themselves upon it. Not only have we 
then the best sort of material to work upon, but 
we have also the highest possible incentive to work 
well. 

The process now current, of giving the so-called 
English branches, the classics, a little foreign lan- 
guage, and a touch of organic work, is manifestly 
not successful. If we judge it theoretically, it 
stands quite condemned. Notice its many deficien- 
cies. It does little or nothing towards making 
sound, vigorous health a necessary result. It of- 
fers no adequate provision for the cultivation of 
the senses, and consequently no adequate provision 
for the physiological culture of the brain as a 
bodily organ. It makes little or no attempt to 
build up the source of power, the emotional life. 
It is not a process directed to the realization of a 



178 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

high social purpose. It does not propose for its 
end sound, beautiful, accomplished, lovable chil- 
dren. It proposes for itself what seems to me the 
quite unworthy task of having children learn with 
much worry and vexation of spirit a variety of 
matters not of first-rate importance anyway, and 
quite easily learned later in life, should they ever 
be wanted. In fact, many of the things the chil- 
dren learn with so much waste of time one year, 
they would have found out for themselves the next 
year. 

I know the process very well, and I am not, I 
think, doing it any injustice. I know its theory : 
I used to hold it myself. The theory is that by 
this process the children are prepared for life, that 
they are taught things which will be of high use- 
fulness later on. But if you ask what life, use- 
ful for what, you find out that the life for which 
the children are supposedly prepared is not rich 
human life, that the things taught do not minister 
to excellence and beauty, to human wealth, but 
that the life is at second hand and the ministra- 
tion is to things. Now culture, as we have else- 
where said, the study and pursuit of perfection, is 
by nothing so distinguished from smaller ends and 
purposes as by its insistence upon the surpassing 
value of the present moment. This current pro- 
cess in education, which denies the life of the 
moment for the life of some future time, cannot 
be an operation of culture. The very humanities 
are studied, not for their rich human content, but 



CHILDHOOD 179 

as a matter of discipline to strengthen the mind 
for tasks to come. We seem to be dealing with 
stimulants and tonics rather than with foods. If 
we judge this current process by its results, it also 
stands condemned. The children are not prepared 
for life; they have not the information they are 
supposed to have, and they have not the mental 
discipline. Worse still, so many of them fall out of 
line altogether. These considerations conspire to 
make one feel that the current process in educa- 
tion, and particularly the process of childhood, is 
an immoral process, — immoral in not proposing a 
defensible social purpose, and immoral in not car- 
rying out the end it does propose. 

In turning now to a more philosophical and social 
scheme of education, one is at once struck with the 
difference in the time setting. It is wholly a thing 
of the present moment, for human wealth, its end 
and aim, is not a thing to be, but a thing that is. 
The charm of human life is a present possession. 
Human delight is a present experience. The peo- 
ple of goodness and power are a present reality. 
I lay great stress upon this present nature of the 
better education, for all our lives long we are put- 
ting off the good thing, the thing in which we please 
ourselves by believing that we believe, and so run 
great risk of dying without attaining it. In all 
practical schemes of salvation, the acceptable time 
is now. So little does this humanized organic edu- 
cation wish to anticipate the future that it would 
prolong the period of childhood, prolong the period 



180 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

of youth, and end by prolonging life itself. And 
each period it regards as an end in itself, to be 
made beautiful and glorious in and for itself, not 
a vestibule to a vestibule to a vestibule. 

The next element to attract one's attention is the 
sweep of the process. Not only does the process of 
childhood cover fifteen years of post-natal life, but 
it claims as well the whole twenty-four hours and 
the whole year. The actual school process need 
occupy only a few hours each day, but it must work 
in conjunction with a home process which has the 
same purpose and is equally practical in carrying 
it out. This requirement is made imperative by 
our very philosophy of life, by our belief in the 
unity of man. It is quite as unreasonable to pro- 
vide for one quarter of the day by a punctilious 
school process, and leave the other three quarters 
unregarded, as it is to appeal so incessantly to the 
intellectual life and leave the supporting bodily 
life unnourished. It is a failure in practicality, 
and therefore in morality. 

Let us picture for a moment the disposition of 
a child's day who is living a wholesome, artistic 
human life, and this is only another way of using 
Milton's fine phrase of simple, sensuous, passionate. 

The child is still sleeping, and in a room which is 
singularly bare, singularly clean, and singularly 
fresh. There is no carpet on the floor. There are 
no hangings and no upholsteries. There is almost 
no furniture in the room, and especially no toilet 
apparatus, with its pails of dirty water and other 



CHILDHOOD 181 

untidiness. The walls are of wood or of clean, 
hard plaster, presenting in either case a surface 
which may be freely washed. They are quite de- 
void of impedimenta, save a large picture of per- 
fect childhood, perhaps Madonna and Child, placed 
where the morning sun will strike it, and where the 
little one will see it when he first awakes. The 
bed is equally simple. In place of the usual sheet 
made smooth and cold and uncomfortable with 
such useless labor, one finds a coarse rough sheet 
doing better service. On this the little fellow lies 
stretched out at full length, without a pillow, or 
with only a very low one. He is covered by a sin- 
gle ample coverlet, which allows free movement 
and some circulation of air. 

This bare little room is beautiful, not alone be- 
cause it is the home of healthy childhood, but 
because it has the two essentials of all beaut}^ — 
color and proportion. The good parents have evi- 
dently preferred to spend their money on an archi- 
tect rather than on a house decorator. Hygienic 
things are commonly very ugly, but it is a great 
mistake to suppose that this offense is necessary. 

And now the child opens his eyes. Have you 
ever been present at such a time, and caught the 
sweet odor of growth and seen the look of glad 
surprise and felt the healthy renewal of life ? At 
such a moment one has the touch of true emotion, 
I had almost said, of worship. One seems to stand 
face to face with the wonder of a new creation. It 
is wise to let the child awake naturally and as slowly 



182 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

as lie will. If he is in health and his life condi- 
tions are what they should be, he will be quite as 
keen to be out of bed and starting the delight of a 
new day as you can possibly be to have him. Should 
he seem sluggish or to demand an undue amount 
of sleep, there is something wrong, and the matter 
ought to be investigated. Probably the diet is un- 
suitable, perhaps too heavy and too clogging. In 
any case, the way out of the difficulty is not by cur- 
tailing natural sleep and routing the little fellow 
out against his will. One must work scientifically, 
and to work scientifically is to work through the 
will and not in opposition to it. 

Then comes a dash to the bath-room, a quick 
cold bath, a brisk toweling, an impetuous return, 
and you have before you a ruddy and very much 
awake little cherub. Perhaps once a week a good 
hot bath, with plenty of soap, is not amiss ; but it 
should be at night, and the little fellow should go 
at once to bed, for the hot water is relaxing, and by 
opening the pores makes one particularly sensitive 
to colds. But the daily morning bath should always 
be cold, winter and summer alike. If the child is 
somewhat delicate, the bath may be simply a quick 
sponge, but for sturdier children a plunge or shower 
is more invigorating. In any case, the bath need 
not occupy more than two or three minutes. If one 
is in doubt about the relative merits of hot and cold 
water, one has only to observe children under the 
two regimes and remark how much sturdier the cold- 
water children are. After a hot bath the child can- 



CHILDHOOD 183 

not get into his clothing quickly enough, and after- 
wards he is very apt to shiver and to complain of 
being cold and chilly. But the boy who comes from 
a cold bath will want to play around awhile before 
he gets into his clothes at all, and will be much 
less given to wrapping up and to coddling himself. 
Moreover, it is observable that he is much less lia- 
ble to colds and grippe than his less sturdy brother. 

And now, how will you dress him ? — Badly if 
you follow the fashion ; wholesomely, if you follow 
simplicity. You can add nothing to the beauty of 
a healthy, well-bred, naked boy. A simple dress, 
the least the climate allows, of good form and color, 
stoutly made, permitting free exercise, and giving 
sun and air a chance to vitalize the little body, this 
is what is wanted, — not upholstery after the Little 
Lord Fauntleroy pattern. All that can be whole- 
somely discarded, hats, shoes and stockings, and 
the like, add so much freedom and so much organic 
possibility. 

It is very difficult to be rational in one's dress, 
for the least deviation from the current mode at- 
tracts an amount of attention which more than bal- 
ances the advantage. I like, myself, to wear no hat, 
but harmless as this little eccentricity is, I never 
think of indulging in it except when I am in the 
hill-country, for the price is very much more than 
I am willing to pay. Children are particularly 
sensitive to such comment, and suffer more keenly 
than some of us suspect when they are obliged to 
wear or to do unusual things. I should be the last 



184 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

to inflict such martyrdom. Under any given condi- 
tions, the most sensible clothing will be the sim- 
plest and least that can be worn, without attracting 
attention. But in every community there are lead- 
ing families which have it in their power to make 
wise dress and social customs the fashion, and it 
is a form of social service quite worthy of their 
attention. 

It is one of the many advantages of life in the 
country, that is, on a farm or on an estate of some 
size, that one has greater freedom to be wise. My 
own summer home is in the hill-country, and I 
have many little brothers spending the summer 
with me. As the estate is a large one, and some- 
what isolated, it is possible to establish ideal so- 
cial customs without offending less evolved per- 
sons and without making the boys suffer from 
the sense of being unusual or marked. In the 
matter of dress we adopt the Greek ideal when 
Greek life was at its sturdiest and best. The little 
fellows wear no clothing beyond a pair of simple 
bathing tights. On reception days or when mak- 
ing excursions off the estate, they wear only two 
garments, a low-necked, quarter-sleeve jersey and a 
pair of knee trousers to match. It is possible to 
get these woven suits of very good quality and 
excellent color, so that the costume, beside being 
eminently simple and hygienic, is entirely accept- 
able on esthetic grounds. Indeed, when you add 
a healthy, merry youngster, with handsome, sun- 
tanned face and wind-tossed hair, and sturdy brown 



CHILDHOOD 185 

arms and legs, it is a picture as pretty as anything 
you will see at Capri. The effect of this constant 
exposure is very marked. There are no tonics for 
the growing body at all equal to sunshine and fresh 
air. Even two months of this simple life in the 
open bring a wonderful increase of health and 
strength. The boys do not catch colds, even 
when the days are wet and cold and windy. That 
the benefit is more than temporary is shown by 
the excellent health record which the boys make 
during the intervening winters. It seems to me, 
too, that this frank and open treatment of the 
body is essentially the modest one, and as a matter 
of experience it has met with the most wholesome 
response. 

I have been tempted to quote this extreme case 
of simplicity in dress, not because it can be imi- 
tated at present in many localities, but in the hope 
that the principle underlying it may everywhere 
receive increasing application. Amid the crowds 
and dampness and filth of the city, a barefooted 
child is manifestly out of place at any season of the 
year. But in the country or at the seashore, in 
summer, the least clothing that children may rea- 
sonably wear will make them the sturdiest and the 
happiest, 

Our small boy being dressed as sensibly as may 
be, the next thing to do is to give him his break- 
fast, and this opens up a large question in social 
esthetics, the question of what we shall eat and 
drink. An acceptable diet, it seems to me, must 



186 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

satisfy these three conditions : it must do no vio- 
lence to the sentiment, it must make for robust 
health, it must involve no social disadvantage. 
Any food whose getting involves pain and terror to 
other living creatures offends the sentiment. Any 
food which is liable to speedy decay or deteriora- 
tion, or which may not be digested with reasonable 
ease, makes against health. Any food whose pre- 
paration means rough, brutal practices and un- 
ideal occupations on the part of others must be 
accounted a social disadvantage. We have very 
little scientific data on this question of foods, and 
what little we have we make scant use of ; but I am 
quite disposed to believe that on hygienic grounds, 
as well as on moral and esthetic grounds, the com- 
ing diet will be largely or wholly vegetarian. I 
notice that this seems to be the general trend of 
opinion on the part of those who view life from a 
distinctly human standpoint. Simple, nourishing, 
unexciting food is evidently what our little man 
wants, and he wants it in an atmosphere of good 
cheer and leisure, not the haste and gray cheerless- 
ness of a clerk's breakfast. It was Voltaire, I 
think, who remarked that he had no respect for 
a man who, after thirty, asked his physician what 
he should eat. In the case of children, their im- 
mediate guardians must study out the question of 
a suitable diet. It will depend upon the tempera- 
ment of the child, the resources of the locality, 
the climate, and the season of the year. I would 
suggest, by way of breakfast, what I give my own 



CHILDHOOD 187 

boys : fresh fruit, fully ripe and in perfect condition ; 
some cereal, such as shredded wheat, oatmeal or 
rolled wheat, with cream and a little sugar ; and 
finally, rolls and butter or corn bread and butter, 
with one or two glasses of milk, and perhaps an egg 
or some marmalade. This is a very simple break- 
fast, and one might even omit the last course, but 
it seems to me quite unwise to make it more elab- 
orate. Especially I would cut out meat and pota- 
toes, and all greasy and fried foods. It would 
be difficult to prescribe the amount which a child 
shall eat. In the presence of an abundance of 
tempting food he may easily eat too much, but 
with plain and simple food, this will hardly occur. 
Good digestion waits on appetite. 

These questions of quarters and sleep and bath 
and dress and diet are not commonly taken up in 
any detail by the formal educator, but they are 
the conditions of health, and just in proportion as 
we are artist-philosophers must we take them up 
and solve them. We are only moral as we are 
successful. 

In framing the occupations of children, we are 
as regardless of the procession of the seasons as we 
are of many other important matters. It is a part 
of our belief in machinery and dull routine and 
shop ideals of life generally that we have come 
to think there is some merit in having children 
get up in the dull gray of a winter's morning, and 
lie abed in the glorious sunshine of summer. In 
this we are not at all practical. It is particularly 



188 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

in the process of childhood that we want to take 
glad notice of the seasons, and arrange all occupa- 
tions in harmony with them. I assume, then, that 
to be up in good season means different hours at 
different times of year, and always means the hour 
of full light. 

Even in families called intelligent the breakfast 
table is usually interrupted by a mad rush for the 
cars or for school. But if we want wholesome, beau- 
tiful children, we will follow the breakfast with a 
short period of leisure, and then go serenely about 
the day's work. One of the first needs in the 
child's day is for general bodily exercise, and this 
can better be given in the home than in the school ; 
for in the home the exercise can be purposeful, 
some household service which will be of real use. 
Here, again, the service can be made a joy or a 
task, according to the spirit we put into it. It 
must be remembered that the childish will to do 
is rather fitful and uncertain, given to taking up 
occupations with enthusiasm and then dropping 
them before completion. The remedy is to fill out 
and complete the will, and this, it seems to me, 
can best be done by working merrily and joyfully 
with the child. A small boy will help you make 
his bed and " tidy up " his room with the greatest 
pleasure if you give him your good company at the 
same time, — the only sort of company you ought 
ever to give any one, — while he would find it a 
very dull and distasteful task if he had to do it 
alone. Tell him a story, sing a duet with him, 



CHILDHOOD 189 

try to out whistle him, in short, see to it that you 
are merry workers in this merry, charming world. 
But don't rob him of the service, with its measure 
of health and good spirit, and don't teach him to 
look down on women while he is still in knicker- 
bockers by forcing him to think that these homely 
necessary tasks are unsuitable for him, but none 
too good for his mother or sisters or the women 
servants. In no case, however, may this service be 
paid for in other coin than loving appreciation, 
for that is to turn the child into a miserable lit- 
tle trader, and quite rob the service of value. It 
seems to me that this home service is far wiser 
than that so often required of children in families 
of moderate means, and that is the running of 
errands. The children feel the friction of the 
market much more than grown-up people do, and 
they are brought into touch with persons and con- 
ditions which they may not wisely meet. 

A day is well begun which has in it these whole- 
some elements of home life, this serenity and good 
comradeship and service ; and we may now afford 
to think of the more formal occupations of the 
school. It is to be observed, though, first and last 
and always, that the home life is the primary thing 
and the school life quite secondary. 

The very first requirement of the school is that 
it shall be near the home and so located that it can 
be reached without danger and without nervous 
friction. This cannot be the case where we have 
such large schools as we have at present, drawing 



190 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

their children from over a wide area. And these 
large schools have really no advantage. They are 
rather appalling to a sensitive child. He is hap- 
pier and much better off as a member of a smaller 
group, which appeals more directly to his love and 
interest. These small groups are perfectly feasible 
in organic education. The work itself is so largely 
individual that a single group may properly in- 
clude children of quite unlike ages. The games 
and the class drills are general enough in their 
character to cover quite wide ranges. The habit 
of massing together children of the same age takes 
away from the pleasure and picturesqueness of life, 
and ends by making the children themselves quite 
selfish and unregardful of others. The most ideal 
group that we can picture is the perfect family 
group in three generations, the noble, white-haired 
man and woman, and their children and their chil- 
dren's children. 

The little ones in a mixed school of this kind 
gain so much from the older children, and the 
older children have a tenderness and a gentle con- 
sideration brought into their hearts by the greater 
helplessness and greater needs of the little ones. 
It is a pretty sight to see a generous child caring 
for one a little bit younger than himself. 

The large schools, with their vast numbers and 
exact classification, have largely been brought 
about by administrative rather than by human 
considerations. In concentrated populations they 
doubtless offer certain mechanical conveniences, 



CHILDHOOD 191 

but even from an administrative point of view 
they are not unqualifiedly successful. The present 
excuse for bringing up children in the city is the 
supposed educational advantage. Were this ad- 
vantage much more substantial than I myself am 
disposed to believe it, it would be completely off- 
set by the absence of fresh air and sunshine, free- 
dom of motion and glad contact with Nature, to 
say nothing of the positive elements of disadvan- 
tage in city life. But with the organization of 
smaller and more diverse groups into sound schools, 
it becomes possible to have the best sort of culture 
in even the most remote country places, anywhere, 
indeed, that a score or more of children may be 
gathered into a beautiful, large room with a teacher 
of organic power. It seems to me that all the ad- 
vantage lies with the small, neighboring school as 
contrasted with the large, remote one. A short 
journey in a storm may be entirely wholesome and 
delightful, where a longer journey would be quite 
impossible ; and so much of our weather is stormy, 
that as a practical people we ought to make pro- 
vision for the fact in our school plans. The jour- 
ney in steam car or trolley involves many subtle 
exposures as well as fatigue and loss of time. It 
is quite appalling to think how many of our school 
children spend a couple of hours each day in going 
to and from school, one seventh of the whole wak- 
ing day ! The journey is a monotony of routine, 
bad air and crowds. It is almost without com- 
pensations. • 



192 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

Let us imagine our little boy at one of these 
small organic schools. Sometimes the father or 
mother accompanies him ; sometimes a neighbor- 
ing playmate ; sometimes he trots off alone. 

The school building, like the home, is simplicity 
itself, and depends for its beauty upon the same 
eternal elements of beauty, upon color and propor- 
tion. One is struck with the large amount of free 
floor space. The children are evidently expected 
to move around the rooms, and are not asked to 
keep still and forever to keep still, when every 
impulse is towards action. The main schoolroom 
has a comfortable bench built in around the walls, 
and there is a good piano at one end of the room ; 
otherwise the floor is perfectly free. Low, broad 
windows give an agreeable light. On the walls 
between the windows there are bookshelves and 
a few choice pictures. But the best thing in this 
very good schoolroom is the teacher, the beautiful 
strong man or woman who is to turn the room to 
human uses. The teacher greets the little people 
with genuine welcome, and is greeted by them with 
simple affection. It is evident that they have not 
to do with a taskmaster, but with a dear comrade. 
In spite of the freedom, it is not a noisy room. You 
hear childish laughter and high soprano voices, but 
that is all. There is no furniture to be overturned 
or stumbled against, and the children, with their 
bare feet, or felt slippers, can make no annoying 
clatter. 

The day begins with music, simple singing in 



CHILDHOOD 193 

unison, and is entirely by ear. First comes some- 
thing sweet and solemn, the Lord's Prayer, or a 
simple, reverent chant ; then something merry and 
human, a song of the seasons. This passes into a 
practical music lesson : the scale is sung ; then the 
common intervals are struck, and the children 
name and sing them. Afterwards, several of the 
children in turn play the scale, or find the inter- 
vals, on the piano. There is no theory or science 
of music. It is all art, pure and simple, the art of 
beautiful sound. A new song is tried, the words 
being learned in connection with the music. Then 
comes a final song, selected by the children them- 
selves, and the music ends for the time. 

And now the teacher reads a lesson, something 
essentially entertaining, the story of a fine action, 
some performance of a philosopher-artist, the sort 
of story which will carry its own moral, and 
need no explanation or application. There are 
no formal chapel exercises. Religion and morals 
can best be taught to children when involved in 
something concrete, and they are too fine a thing 
not to run through the whole day. It is notice- 
able, too, that the teacher is apparently a very un- 
scientific person. He says nothing about elocution 
and how children ought to read. He simply reads 
well himself. 

The morning lesson is followed by a gymnastic 
drill founded on the psychology of the Swedish 
system. It is really a mental drill, as those appre- 
ciate who have tried the Swedish gymnastic. It is 



194 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

not meant to make athletes, but to give control of 
the body, and to make the body obedient to the will. 
The drill is quick and sharp, but it only lasts for 
ten minutes uninterruptedly. A vigorous march, 
a short run, a moment of complete rest, and then 
a second drill, one of vaulting and jumping, a 
second interruption, and a final drill for the older 
children on the vertical ladders. In pleasant 
weather, the drill takes place out of doors on a 
wooden floor, or on a court either of hard dirt or 
smooth turf. In bad weather, the drill is in the 
main schoolroom. This first period of the day 
ends with fifteen minutes of free play. The pe- 
riod has been planned to cultivate general bodily 
power, the motor nerves, the ear, and the voice ; to 
touch this activity with wholesome sentiment, and 
to allow some chance for spontaneous action. 

It hardly seems possible, but an hour and a half 
have gone, and the morning is half spent. As- 
suming that the school began at nine o'clock, it 
is now half after ten. I hope the reader is not 
shocked to observe that no formal lessons in arith- 
metic or geography or grammar or history or the 
like have yet been learned. I hope he will not 
be shocked at the end of the day to find that this 
is still the case. The quest is for human organic 
power, and such a quest must proceed along causa- 
tional lines, rather than by the path of informa- 
tion. 

At the beginning of the second period the chil- 
dren seat themselves on the benches. Two of their 



CHILDHOOD 195 

number bring in a small table and spread it with 
simple food, bread and butter, crackers, milk, or 
fruit. The children serve the teacher, and then 
the other children, taking turns in rendering the 
service. Hands and faces are washed, and the 
children are ready for a half hour's language 
lesson. Every other day, the lesson may be in 
English reading. In the growing months, the sub- 
jects have to do with natural history in its broadest 
sense and with exploration and frank adventure. 
In winter, one turns more naturally to mythology 
and history and biography and general literature. 
The reading is made real by constant reference to 
maps, portraits, photographs, and natural objects. 
The teacher begins the reading, being careful to 
do it well and in a lively human way. Succeeding 
paragraphs are read by the boys and girls them- 
selves, no formal effort being made to teach them 
to read, but allowing them to come into the art 
naturally and through their own interest, the way 
most of us learned who really care for reading and 
for the intellectual life. 

In this way science and history and geography, 
fairy stories and poetry and biography, are treated 
frankly as literature, as something to be enjoyed, 
and, it may be, absorbed, but never as tasks to be 
drudged over. The hard work of the day is really 
organic ; the simple fun and recreation are largely 
intellectual. On alternate days the language lesson 
may be in spoken French. I select this rather than 
German or Italian because of its wonderful lucid- 



196 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

ity, its real power to serve the child in forming an 
acceptable literary style of his own ; and also be- 
cause, in spite of the second-rate position of France 
politically, her speech is still the world-language, 
and therefore a very important tool in internation- 
alism. 

The language lesson is followed by some of the 
most important work of the day, an hour in hand- 
work. The children pass into another room fitted 
up with the necessary work-benches and tools. 
They work individually, and consequently the dis- 
similar ages and tastes and speeds are no disad- 
vantage. They make only finished articles, which 
will be of genuine service to somebody. The chil- 
dren choose the articles themselves and decorate 
only what is admirable. The exercises involve a 
sufficient amount of number-work to bring famil- 
iarity with the fundamental processes of arithmetic, 

— adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing, 

— so that even from the older point of view the 
children are not so badly off. Most of this manual 
training is in sloyd woodwork, but perhaps one 
day a week may be given to sewing, in which the 
boys as well as the girls take a part, and one day 
to clay modeling. The particular form of hand- 
work may well vary with the locality and the season, 
but at least one hour a day should be devoted to 
this cultivation of hand and eye, and of general 
intelligence. 

And now the morning has quite gone and it is 
dinner time. The children all go home for their 



CHILDHOOD 197 

dinner, and as they all live so near, an hour and a 
half is ample time for the going and coming and 
the simple meal itself, with a little time to spare 
for outside play and comradeship. The dinner 
should be the heartiest meal of the day. It may 
suitably consist of three simple courses, — a hot, 
nourishing soup ; then several well-cooked vegeta- 
bles, especially green vegetables, and beans and cel- 
ery, with a little meat or fish or poultry, if these 
be eaten ; and finally some simple pudding made 
of rice or farina, not forgetting the decorative 
effect of a few stoned raisins, or a colored sauce. 
These suggestions are made only as a basis for 
something better. The point is to avoid all fried 
and greasy foods and an excess of potatoes or other 
starches, and to have the diet sufficiently rich in 
nitrogenous material, and in green vegetables, such 
as lettuce, spinach, asparagus, green peas. If meat 
is not used, one must be particularly careful to 
supply the nitrogen in some other form. One may 
be a consistent vegetarian as far as the moral and 
social requirements of an ideal diet are concerned, 
and still use eggs, milk, butter, and cheese. It 
might be well to include any animal food which 
has either not had sensation at all, or so low a 
sensation that death hardly seems a violence, as in 
the case of oysters, clams, scollops, and other lowly 
organized sea foods. Even fish and poultry may 
be so handled as not to offend the sentiment. 
There still remains the objection that holds in the 
case of all animal food, — the liability to decay 



198 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

and consequent poison. If it be admitted to the 
diet at all, great care must go along with it. But 
however simple the dinner, it must be esthetic, and 
it must be served in an atmosphere of good fellow- 
ship. Better a jolly dinner of herbs than a sour- 
faced feeding on tough beef. 

The afternoon begins at half past one with a 
quiet half hour given to various occupations ac- 
cording to the ages and tastes of the children. The 
smaller ones may well take a nap, or be read to 
by the teacher or one of the older children. The 
older children are allowed to read what they choose 
from a selected library. The entire point is to 
have a half hour of entire quiet. Then comes an 
equal period of art work. Whatever the medium, 
— pencil, crayon, or paint, — the work is self- 
prompted and self-directed. The teacher suggests 
and helps, names possible tasks, criticises the re- 
sults, explains successful methods of representa- 
tion ; but the real impulse is from the child, and 
the office of the teacher is simply to encourage the 
child to give expression to this impulse. It will 
be a great gain if the teacher himself occupies his 
spare moments with some work which the chil- 
dren will admire and can understand. Nothing 
so inspires one to art work as true art work in 
progress. It is advisable to have much of the 
work rich in color, even barbaric in its splendor, 
provided the colors be pure and clean, and the 
combinations possible. The older children may 
make dimensioned drawings of the articles which 



CHILDHOOD 199 

they intend to make in the wood-shop. But even 
here I would recommend that the work be entirely 
freehand, so as to develop hand and eye and ac- 
custom the child to depending upon himself. 

The remainder of the afternoon, the best and 
mellowest part of it, from half past two on, is 
given to voluntary bodily occupations, and is spent 
out of doors whenever the weather permits. The 
occupations differ with the season. The children 
attend to their gardens, or care for their pets, or 
play games, or walk, or ride their wheels, or do any 
simple wholesome thing they are most inclined to. 
If they want to build a hut and play Robinson 
Crusoe or Indians, it will be a useful sport. If 
they prefer the circus and to try tight-rope walk- 
ing, it is the very thing for them to do, provided 
the rope is not too high and there is a fat feather- 
bed underneath. Games of their own devising are 
much more educational than anything we can pos- 
sibly devise for them. We can suggest and help 
and encourage, but we make a false step when we 
substitute our will for theirs. When the weather 
is stormy, there are charades and tableaux and 
acting, hand-ball and basket-ball and stage-coach. 
The more original the game, the greater its de- 
mand upon action and inventiveness, the better. 
It is to be remembered, too, that games of skill 
are infinitely better than games of chance. The 
latter I would discourage, as well as store-keeping, 
stamp-trading, and all occupations which tend to 
develop the commercial spirit. It is far wiser for 



200 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

children to have their wants simply and whole- 
somely provided, and to have* nothing to do with 
money or barter. 

This afternoon programme is entirely flexible and 
is altered to suit the day and the season. It may 
not be carried out in this particular form at any 
time, and usually not more than three times a 
week in any form. The other afternoons, if day 
and season allow, are spent in some outing, depend- 
ing upon the local conditions. If there is a lake 
or river near by, there will be swimming in sum- 
mer, skating in winter, boating in spring and fall. 
It is very important that both boys and girls should 
learn to swim and skate and row before they are 
fifteen years old, much more important than that 
they should learn arithmetic or geography. Fur- 
thermore, if it can possibly be managed, now is 
the time to teach them to ride horseback. One is 
never quite at home in the saddle, unless one be- 
gins as a child. Then there may be a forest to 
go sylvestering in, or a neighboring hill that invites 
a climbing. If the community is agricultural, and 
it has always seemed to me that those children are 
most fortunate who have the run of a farm, there 
will be plenty of natural occupations for the chil- 
dren, planting, haymaking, fruit and nut gathering, 
and these are better than anything of our invention. 
The one supreme condition is that the occupations 
shall be in the company of friendly, gentle people 
who have the love and confidence of the children. 
Neighbor husbandman, bear this always in mind. 



CHILDHOOD 201 

And now our little man comes home. He has 
had a long, full day, but he is not unduly tired. 
He has been doing the things which were natural 
and proper, things in which he could put his inter- 
est and affection. He has had exercise and rest, 
fresh air and food, self -directed activity and gen- 
erous sentiment. He carries no books. He comes 
home free-handed and free-minded. He is an 
available member of the re-united family group. 
There are still charming little services which he 
can render, a helping hand in the preparation of 
the evening meal, some loving foresight for the 
comfort of the father, some chivalry for the mother, 
and you cheat the little man if you have a servant 
do these things. If the father has been away all 
day, he may want a substantial dinner in the even- 
ing, or it may be necessary by way of hospitality, 
but it is a mistake to have the little people share 
it. A simple meal is much better for them, per- 
haps a course of milk-toast, or hasty pudding, and 
then some cooked fruit or jam with simple biscuits. 
But the children need not be banished from the 
table. And at this evening meal, how many de- 
lightful matters there are to talk about, if one has 
had these wholesome activities and sentiments in 
one's day. The father and mother will surely want 
to know what trees are green in the forest, what 
flowers are in bud in the garden, whether the water 
was cold at the swimming, or the ice smooth for 
the skaters, what article was fashioned in the work- 
shop, what feat was accomplished in the drill, what 



202 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

thoughts were aroused by the reading, and just 
as surely as the father and mother want to know 
all this good news, the little boy will want to tell 
it, and out of his sincere genuine living will come 
equally sincere and genuine expression. 

And then come the quiet hour in the garden or at 
the fireside, the droll fancies and the half guesses, 
the drawing closer to you as the darkness deepens, 
and the precious love and confidence it expresses. 
The day is done, and it is bedtime. Once more you 
stand in the beautiful bare little room upstairs, and 
help the boy to bed. Reverently you remove the 
simple clothing. You put your arms around the 
beautiful little body. You feel the warm breath 
against your cheek. You listen to the child prayer. 
You draw the coverlet over the little form. In a 
moment the boy is sleeping. As you kneel beside 
him, you silently thank the All-Father that in the 
form of childhood he has chosen to renew the world- 
life. 

In childhood, so rich is the abundance of life 
that I have not been able to give a complete pic- 
ture, §ven of a single day. I have been able to 
give only the barest sketch. It must be taken sim- 
ply as a suggestion. Doubtless a wider experience 
will alter many of the details. Yet to the plan it- 
self I hold very tenaciously, for in my own experi- 
ments in education, just so far as I have been faith- 
ful to the human, organic spirit of this plan, I have 
succeeded, and just so far as I have been unfaith- 
ful to it, I have failed. It is an aristocratic plan 



CHILDHOOD 203 

in its insistence upon human excellence, but it is 
also thoroughly democratic in insisting upon this 
excellence for all. Further, it is a plan which may 
not be dismissed by any cry of Impossible ! or 
Utopian ! The bare and beautiful home costs less 
than the overcrowded, ugly one. The universe fur- 
nishes fresh air more ungrudgingly than we do foul 
air. Cold water is more obtainable than hot. The 
simple dress and simple fare mean less labor and 
less money and less service. It is true that the 
organic schoolhouse does require space outside and 
roominess within, but it is a simple structure, and 
the equipment is not expensive. The forces of 
Nature, of plant growth and animal growth and 
child self-activity, are ready to our hand. Lake and 
river and ocean and forest and mountain and field 
and park and storm and air and sun, the real teach- 
ers of childhood, serve us without salary. Even the 
strong, beautiful, reverent men and women who are 
to gain from these forces the reaction of human 
organic power will be available as soon as we de- 
mand them. 

Even were it true that there were great difficul- 
ties in the way of carrying out this plan, it would 
still be very worth while to overcome the great dif- 
ficulties ; for into these first fifteen years of life must 
be crowded the most important educational work of 
all, the development of a strong, rich personality. 
If we fail, there will be temperamental poverty for 
the rest of life. The information now offered as 
a substitute for this thoroughgoing development 



204 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

is of doubtful value anyway, and later in life can 
be easily gained should it happen to be wanted. 
But organic education must work while the material 
is still plastic. 

The most highly evolved conduct, the most hu- 
man conduct, is the conduct which most perfectly 
adapts means to ends. To be moral is to be prac- 
tical, — to be practical is to succeed. If we want 
human power, if we believe in this eternal, world- 
wide quest of perfection, then we must as a highly 
evolved people, as late comers on the stage of hu- 
man effort, from whom great things are properly 
expected, we must turn to those practical organic 
operations by means of which this power and per- 
fection may alone be gained. The educational 
process of childhood is only a moral process as 
it produces the children of good fortune. 









CHAPTER VII 
YOUTH 

Some time ago an elderly lady went into one of 
our large toy shops, and finding much the same 
goods as in former years, asked, rather impatiently, 
" Do you never have any new toys ? " " No, ma- 
dam," answered the shopkeeper, very humbly, 
" but the children are new." In developing a 
scheme of education out of a given philosophic 
idea, one must feel at times that one is frequently 
offering the same wares. I can only hope that the 
importance of the subject will lead the reader to 
bring to succeeding chapters such a renewed inter- 
est that he will not be unpleasantly conscious of 
the repetitions. I propose in the present chapter 
to apply the principles of organic education to the 
problem of the high school. 

Perhaps no considerable body of people have 
found themselves able to quite accept the scheme 
of education for childhood which has just been 
outlined. And probably no considerable body of 
people have found themselves able to quite reject 
it. However open to criticism the scheme may 
be in matters of detail, its central position seems 
to me impregnable. The wealth of the world is 



206 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

human. The end of education is an accomplished 
and lovable humanity, beautiful men and beautiful 
women and beautiful children. Those of us who 
believe in culture, in the practical study and pur- 
suit of perfection, must forever keep our creed in 
mind. 

There is, I am disposed to think, a large body of 
earnest people who are deterred from the accept- 
ance of a programme of organic education such 
as has just been outlined, by what they regard as 
practical obstacles, but who give their partial or 
complete assent to the theory of the scheme. They 
agree very cordially with the idea that childhood, 
that is, the first fifteen years of life, should be de- 
voted to organic work, to gymnastic and music and 
manual training and spoken language, to the culti- 
vation of those bodily accomplishments and powers 
upon which so much of the charm and the success 
of life, so much of individual and social virtue, 
indisputably depend; and they agree /that to early 
youth, from the fifteenth to the nineteenth birth- 
day, — the high-school period, in fact, — belongs 
the formal elementary work of language and sci- 
ence and mathematics. But every attempt to re- 
deem the education of childhood from formalism 
and make it a warm, human, organic process, has 
met at the outset with one of those very practical 
difficulties which could not in kindness be ignored. 
There are, of course, minor difficulties in the way 
of equipment and suitable teachers, and the back- 
sliding parents who protest that their children are 



YOUTH 207 

learning nothing ; but these difficulties, though 
troublesome, are all manageable, and in the end 
entirely soluble. If well-to-do people want it, they 
can have roomy, open halls in place of stuffy class- 
rooms ; and simple benches, ladders, bars, and 
vaulting-horses in place of expensive school desks, 
just as they can compass clubs and churches and 
libraries. And the teachers, too, are forthcoming. 
Already there are normal schools of gymnastic, 
and sloyd training schools for teachers, and ad- 
mirable conservatories of music, and crowds of 
delightful men and women who believe in the dear 
mother tongue as an instrument of use and beauty, 
and in the modern speech of Europe as a means 
of communication, and not as a badge of supposed 
culture. These sources of the good article are di- 
rectly at our hand, and they will send us charm- 
ing people, vital, red-blooded, just as soon as we 
want them. We have only to set the standard, 
only to let it be known that human qualities — 
charm and character and accomplishment — count 
more than a knowledge of facts, and the require- 
ment will gladly be met. And they will cost no 
more than the less joyful and less full-blooded men 
and women who are now doing their conscientious 
and nervous best to make children miserable. Nor 
shall we be needing an unreasonable number of 
teachers to carry out this scheme of organic educa- 
tion. It is quite possible, for example, to combine 
gymnastic with manual training ; to combine music 
with English and French. Such partnerships are 



208 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

entirely natural and suitable; they would indeed 
do much towards making the life of the teacher 
more joyful and wholesome. It is very dreary to 
teach all branches of human knowledge, and even 
more dreary to teach only one branch, all day and 
every day. The personal thunder which made a 
first lesson so telling gets to sound absolutely in- 
sincere when given over and over again to succeed- 
ing sections. There are, of course, glorious ex- 
ceptions, but the average specialist is a very nar- 
row and unlovable person, better qualified for re- 
search work than for leading eager spirits into the 
holy places of the intellectual life. Nor is it en- 
tirely Utopian to expect that under these broader 
accomplishments of the teacher, and giving to the 
accomplishments their essential graciousness and 
charm, will be found warm human hearts beating 
with high moral and social and artistic purpose. 
When we want comrades of this character, in place 
of operatives in the factory of instruction, we shall 
quite readily be able to get them. 

Even the parents are manageable. What they 
all want is the children's best good, and this, too, 
is what the anemic normal school graduates want. 
Let us do them both entire justice as sincere 
seekers after perfection, and this, even though we 
may believe that they are failing to see in what 
perfection consists. It is, perhaps, natural, in an 
age when children just in their teens have distinct 
views on territorial expansion and tariff legislation 
and the temperance question, that a devoted parent 



YOUTH 209 

should be appalled at the spectacle of an ignorant 
child, however beautiful and accomplished and 
lovable. But in the long run, the human heart is 
sound. When the organic training begins to show 
results, when the father and mother notice that the 
little one is sturdier and more alert and more vital, 
more of an individual, more human, the look of 
glad recognition which they exchange with each 
other is the sign and symbol of an approval which 
may be counted upon. 

I have called these difficulties minor difficulties 
because they are all so easily surmounted. But the 
major difficulty, the one which may not in kind- 
ness be ignored, the one which prevents the hu- 
manizing of the lower schools, and vetoes many a 
wholesome, red-blooded experiment in education, is 
really this — when these children of good fortune, 
for such I must regard them, come, at fifteen years 
of age, to the door of the high school, they find it 
closed. They are not wanted. They do not know 
parsing and grammar and spelling and arithmetic 
and political geography and physical geography 
and history and civil government and physiology. 
They are simply strong and well, clear-eyed and 
accomplished, inquisitive and earnest, full of power 
and promise. Comparing the two groups of util- 
ities, the high school chooses the former. But 
often, it chooses with a sigh. What, then, is the 
excuse ? It is the same excuse all along the line. 
The lower schools would be good if the high 
schools would let them, and the high schools would 



210 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

be good if the colleges would let them, and the 
colleges would teach the knowledge of most worth 
if the community would let them, and business 
men would be honest if it were not for competi- 
tion, and finally, I suppose, we should all be for 
going immediately to heaven if we were not for 
stopping elsewhere. Apparently, it is a superior 
madness which drives us. 

Now this difficulty of the lower schools is a very 
real and practical difficulty, a solid ghost. We 
may protest and call names, and make ourselves 
as disagreeable as we please, but the fact remains. 
Education has become a machine, just as politics 
has become a machine, and it is a serious matter 
to get out of line. It would be a veritable unkind- 
ness to submit children to an educational process, 
which, however perfect in itself, would leave them 
in their sixteenth year quite stranded, quite out of 
the educational current. And this, it seems to me, 
represents the very core of the difficulty. A pro- 
cess of organic education, to be practical, — and 
unless it is practical, it is neither moral nor kind, 
— must provide always an open vista, must extend 
continuously from birth to death, with all doors 
open and welcome everywhere. But there is a way 
out, even from this difficulty. 

I have used one of the most charming words in 
the language, Childhood, to cover the educational 
process of the lower schools. Let us use the 
scarcely less charming word, Youth, to cover the 
high-school period. 



YOUTH 211 

To keep life simple, sensuous, passionate, in the 
fine sense in which Milton used these terms, is a 
somewhat more difficult task when the life happens 
to be the life of youth than when it happens to be 
the life of childhood. Youth is a time of transi- 
tion, the passing of childhood into manhood, and, 
like all transition times, it is difficult. There is real 
pathos when the boy starts out all eager for some old- 
time sport, and stops in the middle of it. It has lost 
its zest. Who cannot himself recall a black day 
when, for example, wading turned out to be less fun 
than you thought it was, or some old game which you 
were once so keen for suddenly became uninterest- 
ing. In youth, it seems to me, the boy is by fits and 
starts a child and a man, neither very thoroughly 
and neither for any great length of time together. 
He is a bit trying at times, — just as you and I 
used to be, — awkward, uncertain, perhaps some- 
what selfish and unresponsive. But he needs, if 
ever he needs, your best love and sympathy. He 
is to no one quite so trying as he is to himself. All 
this conspires to make the problem of the high 
school a problem of considerable nicety. It is a 
time of surprises and curious inversions. The un- 
satisfactory child becomes the studious youth ; or 
the good child the troublesome youth. New forces 
are at work. Hereditary traits begin to ripen, 
traits quite unheralded in childhood. Many of 
these appear for the first time with adolescence, and 
seem to be intimately connected with the growth 
and maturing of the reproductive functions. Nor 



212 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

must we forget nor neglect the tremendous physical 
changes which come with these race-conserving 
functions, changes which the lad himself does not 
understand and about which he needs the most 
careful and reverent instruction. In a word, our 
youth, with his growing strength and sense of 
manly power, is a bundle of tremendous possibili- 
ties, and needs the utmost care and wisdom and 
loving comradeship that we can give him. 

But this problem of the high school, the educa- 
tional process of youth, cannot be forestalled. It 
can only be met when it comes. And this, after 
all, is to us the most serious criticism of the older 
education, and of the older social schemes gener- 
ally, that they turn life into a long drawn-out pre- 
paration, with only stolen bits of realization here 
and there ; childhood preparing for youth, youth 
preparing for manhood, manhood preparing for a 
leisure which never comes. The free, bodily, emo- 
tional life of childhood, genuinely devoid of antici- 
pation, genuinely taken up with immediate reali- 
zation, is the best possible preparation for the more 
intellectual life of youth. The simple, sensuous, 
passionate life is a matter of the present moment, 
and culture is a matter of the present moment, and 
we miss the best of it all if we live either in the 
future or in the past. So the high school must 
begin with no requirements. It must allow child- 
hood to live its full, free life, and it must set its 
new, initial tasks for youth. This means practi- 
cally the open door, the absence of all entrance ex- 



YOUTH 213 

animations. If childhood has been misspent, it 's a 
pity, but the problem of youth still remains. And 
childhood is least likely to be misspent if it has 
been given over frankly and fully to the occupa- 
tions proper to childhood, to that organic culture 
which must be accomplished during the first fifteen 
years of life. The open door of the high school 
makes this organic culture both possible and wise. 
The open door removes the one really serious ob- 
stacle to the carrying out of the programme out- 
lined in the last chapter, for it provides the neces- 
sary outlook, the vista which gives continuity to the 
educational process. 

But the open door of the high school does more 
than this. It serves the high school quite as vitally 
as it does the lower school. It will in time bring 
better material to the high school, children of power 
and promise ; and it enables the high school to per- 
form its whole function, without obliging it to de- 
cline such a large part of it. If we agree to this 
conception of the high school, that it is the educa- 
tional process of youth, we must, I think, feel that 
as a practical process it quite fails unless it deals 
with youth, not selected youth, but youth such as 
we find it. And I do not see how we can escape 
this conception of the high school, unless we are 
willing to deny the fundamental proposition that 
education is the practical process by which we real- 
ize the social purpose. 

There are American cities, I regret to say, where 
the passion for examining children is so great and 



214 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

the mistrust of the educational machine in its own 
effectiveness is so profound, that the door of the 
high school is doubly barred. There is one exami- 
nation at the lower schools and then a second 
and quite distinct examination, covering the same 
ground, at the high schools themselves ; and both 
examinations are held in the month of June, in 
apartments where the thermometer is frequently 
above ninety degrees Fahrenheit. 

In reality, the open door, instead of introducing 
impossibilities, greatly simplifies the problem of 
the curriculum. It is always easier to plan an 
initial course of study wisely than it is to articulate 
one course with another course given under totally 
different conditions. We have been meeting with 
much failure in our high schools, building on very 
uncertain foundations indeed, because we have 
been taking our entrance examinations seriously, 
and have assumed that the children know many 
things which they turn out not to know. Particu- 
larly is this true in the matter of language. The 
German teacher complains that he can do little be- 
cause the children do not even know their English 
grammar. The French teacher says the same 
thing. The Latin teacher says practically the same. 
But the children are supposed to know their Eng- 
lish grammar, for they have passed an examination 
on it. In assuming ignorance on the part of the 
incoming youth, the boys and girls from the lower 
schools, we put ourselves nearer to the facts in the 
case, and are building on much surer ground. 



YOUTH 215 

It seems to me that children o£ fifteen who can 
read and write and count, and who want to come 
to the high school, have satisfied the essential re- 
quisites for entrance. If, in addition to this, they 
have had the organic work proper to childhood, 
then the working out of a satisfactory course of 
study is not difficult. 

Under the present social regime, the regime of 
economic uncertainty for every man> woman, and 
child, it is necessary that the high-school curriculum 
shall introduce an economic condition. It is this, 
that since changes in the family fortune cause so 
many children to be withdrawn from the high school, 
it is very desirable that the most concrete and di- 
rectly useful studies shall be placed in the early 
part of the four-year course, and also that, as far 
as may be, the studies shall be condensed into rea- 
sonably short periods of time. In this way the 
children who are obliged to drop out will get some 
substantial good as far as it goes. It might in any 
case be desirable to place the more concrete studies 
first, and to have a very small number of somewhat 
condensed courses running at any one time, but we 
may at least hope that sometime it will not be 
necessary on just these grounds. If we look upon 
education as a process covering the whole of life, 
and if the social purpose seem to us the unfaltering 
pursuit of excellence and beauty, we must natu- 
rally believe that the educational process of youth 
will be regarded as one of the main concerns of 
society, and will not be allowed to depend upon so 



216 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

uncertain a thing as the success or failure of some 
individual venture in the world of the market. 
This first condition, the economic requirement, 
may, I think, be looked upon as a passing ex- 
pedient. 

And then there are two other conditions which 
the high-school curriculum is called upon to satisfy. 
One is the necessity of preparing for college so as 
to keep open the educational vista, and the other is 
the necessity of being true to the present moment, 
so as to make the school an instrument of culture 
rather than an obstacle. Those who are prac- 
tically working over this problem must, I think, 
feel that the two conditions just named are essen- 
tially antagonistic, just as the two similar condi- 
tions in the process of childhood, the preparation 
for the high school and the utilization of the pre- 
sent moment, were found to be antagonistic. The 
way out is also the same. It is to confine one's self 
to the task of using to the best advantage the pos- 
sibilities of the present moment. 

From an organic point of view, the process of 
youth is not so very different from that of child- 
hood. It is only more subtle, and adds an increas- 
ingly intellectual element. We have still the same 
unit organism, still the same need for sound health, 
keen sense, and usable muscle, still a dependence 
upon the same source of power, the emotional life. 
There is no break in the educational process, no 
abrupt change in the direction of its working. 
Childhood glides imperceptibly into youth. Even 



YOUTH 217 

the profound physical changes which mark the 
passing of childhood, and usher in the coming of 
manhood and womanhood, are very slow and grad- 
ual changes. 

All that can be said for small organic schools for 
children holds also for youth. A high school of a 
hundred scholars is vastly better than our present 
gigantic establishments, with their two or three 
thousand young people gathered from the four quar- 
ters of the town, and forced to spend two, or even 
three, hours a day in the nervous and altogether 
uncompensated act of transit. The first care of 
the more philosophic education would be to remove 
this strain by lessening the size of the high schools 
and increasing their number. These smaller schools 
seem to me to have every advantage. The build- 
ings themselves can be made more humanly attrac- 
tive ; the journey can be made simply a pleasant 
walk ; the young people can go home for a quiet, 
wholesome dinner ; they can know their schoolmates 
better, and form genuine friendships with them ; 
and, best of all, the teachers can really know their 
scholars, and can treat them as individuals. And 
these are all very solid advantages ; that is to say, 
very solid if you are working for human wealth 
rather than mere administrative mechanism. 

In some of the larger city high schools, I am 
told by the teachers themselves that they do not 
even know their scholars by name, but merely 
by a number, and this only from the correspond- 
ence with a given desk number. One distractingly 



218 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

busy woman told me that she had eighteen hundred 
girls come under her instruction every week. I 
think that the church, during the darkest night of 
the Middle Ages, could offer nothing more gro- 
tesque. Imagine trying to lead number 57 into 
the perfect life, without knowing his or her name, 
and without being able to recognize 57 except 
when the youth happened to be at a desk of that 
number ! 

In a somewhat scattered community, it is quite 
possible to combine the high school with the lower 
school in case it would not make the establishment 
too large, and this would have the advantage of 
the more mixed and picturesque group of young 
people and children. Perhaps the very best thing 
that a child gets at school, in any case, is just this 
human companionship, the social side, and it is got 
in larger measure as the group is more interest- 
ing and varied. Let us assume, then, a small high 
school of about one hundred and twenty children, 
and a four-year course, and let us inquire how the 
day shall be spent in order to get the greatest 
human good out of it. 

As with childhood, the educational process will 
be shockingly ineffective unless it cover the twenty- 
four hours. 

Our lad must awake, as he did when a child, 
in a clean, bare, beautiful little room, with a plen- 
tiful supply of fresh air in it. Or, if he have 
younger brothers, I think he will be the better 
fellow if he share a larger apartment with the 



YOUTH 219 

small boys, and give them daily of his love and 
care. Some people are born unselfish, but the 
great majority of us have to come into this divine 
virtue through the influence of a compelling en- 
vironment. If our boys are selfish, it is because 
we make them so. I know of nothing more odious 
than a lusty, swaggering, selfish boy, — a type 
which one sometimes meets in America, and, I re- 
gret to say, quite as frequently among the privi- 
leged classes as among poorer folk. And I know 
of nothing more lovable and interesting than a 
strong, gentle, unselfish boy, — the type which 
alone represents human wealth and the realization 
of the social purpose. But whether odious or 
lovable, these boys are what we make them. They 
are our children, and it is for us to say. If we are 
their parents after the flesh, then it is we who 
have bestowed their heredity. If we are their 
spiritual parents, that is to say, their teachers, it is 
we who decide their environment. I believe, my- 
self, that selfishness is the root of all evil, the one 
unforgivable sin, and that love, which is the sweeter 
name for unselfishness, is the one salvation. So im- 
portant does it seem to me to cultivate this human, 
loving side of youth that I would even have the 
two boys occupy the same bed. The isolation of a 
single brass cot is counted more hygienic, but if 
both children are clean and healthy, as they should 
be, and there is plenty of sweet, fresh air in the 
room, as there should be, the one bed will be en- 
tirely wholesome. The lad who puts protecting, 



220 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

loving arms around a small brother will make the 
stronger man and better father. And the little 
fellow himself will gain immensely from this sense 
of manly comradeship. 

Our lad must get up after the sun does, when 
the light is clear and strong. He must have a 
vigorous bath in cold water, and must have a few 
moments of honest exercise, perhaps one or two 
hundred arm and leg and trunk movements, before 
he puts on any clothing. His dress and fare must 
be simple and sturdy. The breakfast may not be 
hurried through and the family life clean forgot. 
Did it ever occur to you what a grave crime we 
commit in the name of education when we allow 
our young people — worse than that, when we force 
them — to omit the graciousness and charm of home 
life in order to rush off to school, and then at 
school, with most indifferent success, try to teach 
them in what the graciousness and charm of home 
life consist? It is very fine and very beautiful 
when we teach these young people to admire heroic 
action, and to sympathize with the human touches 
in history and literature. It is very fine, I s&y, pro- 
vided we follow it up with heroic action on their 
part and on our part, and multiply the human 
touches in their lives and in ours. If we omit 
these practical acts of morality and of good feel- 
ing, then the admiration and sympathy which we 
have called up make for weakness rather than for 
strength. We are producing sentimentalists in 
place of the people of power. And sentimental- 



YOUTH 221 

ists, we all agree, are quite undesirable and im- 
moral persons. 

The disaster of teaching sentiment without fol- 
lowing it up by sturdy action can be seen in many 
a family and school. The boys openly sneer at 
the better things of life ; at seventeen they are 
already cynics. The girls become either insincere 
or sentimental. And again we have ourselves to 
thank for it. It is a very responsible thing to 
be " grown-up," for then we become a part of the 
causation of life. 

If we place the breakfast hour at half after 
seven, and allow thirty minutes for the meal (which 
is ample, provided the breakfast is as simple as it 
ought to be), we have still a clear half hour before 
the young people need be starting on their walk to 
school. In this thirty minutes so much could be 
done toward laying the foundations of a magnifi- 
cent manhood and womanhood, if only the father and 
the mother had the love and leisure to avail them- 
selves of the opportunity. Many beautiful things 
are possible in even so short an interval, when the 
interval comes every day. The older habit of hav- 
ing family prayers after breakfast had much to 
commend it, so long as the service was simple and 
sincere, and the daily life of the parents made 
them worthy to administer the office. It were 
much better to abolish it than to have it insincere. 
A tricky business man, a sharp dealer, will do his 
children less harm to appear before them frankly 
as a careless liver than to play the hypocrite. 



222 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

Should they meet goodness in later life they will 
be less likely to mistrust it. 

Even the sharing of the home tasks, the com- 
radeship of common effort, has a large contribution 
to make towards the educational process of youth. 

At present, this early part of the day is made as 
devoid of thought and feeling as possible. The 
morning meal is dreary, for all are rushing, and 
after the meal there is no family life at all. The 
father is off, the children are off; one hears no 
connected conversation, no music, no comradery, 
only hurrying footsteps and the front door bang- 
ing. It were much better to let a bunch of fresh 
flowers and the words of good fellowship take the 
place of the half-cooked beefsteak and the greasy 
fried potatoes ; to have the family life respected, 
even if the business life and the school life have 
to be neglected. 

This wholly unideal and unnecessary condition 
of affairs can be reformed, as so many of our social 
shortcomings can be reformed, by the simple habit 
of looking at everything from a human rather than 
from a commercial standpoint. The sacred days 
may not be desecrated without making us fright- 
fully poor. 

If the boys and girls have a sane, sweet morning 
at home, and come to the high school after a brisk, 
wholesome walk, the day is well begun. It is nine 
o'clock, and school opens with a simple chapel 
exercise, followed by singing and the short daily 
drill in gymnastic. All of this need not occupy 



YOUTH 223 

more than half an hour, and then from half after 
nine until half after twelve we have three solid 
hours for intellectual work. If we count five 
school days, this gives fifteen hours a week. They 
may profitably be devoted to language and mathe- 
matics, throwing all the science and hand-work to 
the afternoons. The time may be divided some- 
what as follows, — three hours to English, four 
hours to literature and history, four hours to 
French or German, or Greek or Latin, and four 
hours to mathematics. 

By giving a full hour to each lesson, it is quite 
possible to have all the work done in school, and 
this plan has such vital advantage that I want to 
ask your close attention to it. In a general way, it 
may be said that the majority of boys and girls do 
not know how to study, and that they need much 
more help in this primary occupation of the intel- 
lectual life than they do in the much less difficult 
and much less important act of reciting. In the 
matter of English, for example, a quiet hour given 
to the writing of a theme, following suggestions 
made by the teacher, and receiving direct help 
when necessary, will come to much more than the 
uncertain, unsystematic composition work done at 
home. So the hour of combined analysis and 
etymology, where the work is done on the spot, 
and where all participate, will lead in the end to 
a keener sense of the function of words, and a 
nicer discrimination in their choice, than can be 
gained by any amount of recitation work. 



224 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

There is, indeed, so much to be said against 
recitation in all departments that I wonder it 
should ever have been thought wise. As con- 
ducted at present, the recitation assumes a perfect 
knowledge on the part of the scholar, and has been 
devised apparently to give him a chance to display 
this knowledge and to assure the teacher that, 
however preposterous the original assumption, it 
is nevertheless true. It is, I suppose, the only 
way of quieting the doubtful conscience of the 
teacher. The natural result is that the recitation 
becomes a time for hiding ignorance, and putting 
forward the best foot of knowledge, a proceeding 
no doubt ornamental, but less certainly useful. 

If one mistrusts this account of the matter, one 
has but to look at the widespread and almost irre- 
pressible habit of prompting to see that this at least 
is the way the boys and girls themselves look at 
it, whatever may be the theory in the mind of the 
teacher. 

The recitation method makes the home the real 
place for gaining knowledge, and the school the 
place for displaying it. We might profitably invert 
this arrangement, letting the school be the place 
for gaining knowledge, and the home the place for 
applying it. Another manifest evil is that the stu- 
dents who really do know the lesson and have come 
up to the theoretical expectation of the recitation 
are obliged to listen to the halting and garbled 
account of it given by the students who do not, 
an ordeal which is certainly very trying, so trying 



YOUTH 225 

indeed that if the quicker ones take refuge in clay 
dreams and all sorts of wool-gathering, they can 
scarcely be blamed. We older people should do 
the same, or more likely still, we should refuse out 
and out to submit to any such process. It is a mis- 
chievous thing to sit in the room with any sort of 
purposeful noise, even a dull sermon, and not listen 
to it, for in this way the habit of attention becomes 
quite impaired. These arguments, taken together, 
seem to me to form an insurmountable objection 
to the recitation method. 

The opposite method of making the lesson hour 
the time for learning has everything to commend 
it. It replaces apathy by a wholesome self-activity. 
It has particular advantages when we come to the 
study of history and literature. By treating his- 
tory as literature, and enriching the historical nar- 
rative by constant reference to contemporary liter- 
ature, it is possible to cover the ground much 
more completely, to enlist in the study a very lively 
interest, and to make a much deeper and truer 
impression than by any amount of memorizing. The 
real value of history study is just this human value, 
the development of a more complete and more tol- 
erant attitude toward life and time. It ought to 
bring out one's appreciation of the immense human 
forces which have gone towards making the world 
what it is. The broad world outlook is what is 
wanted, and this comes only from the broad, sym- 
pathetic reading of a correlated history and litera- 
ture. 



226 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

The themes in English may profitably have for 
their subject events or incidents touched upon in the 
history, and this writing of them down in black and 
white will give a sufficient amount of exactness and 
accuracy. The correlation of English, history, and 
literature has the further advantage of concentrat- 
ing the attention upon one period, a plan which pro- 
duces strong, clear impressions, and saves us from 
the waste of a dissipated thought. Four years of 
such careful work, seven hours a week, will yield 
large returns in the way of an ability to handle 
the mother tongue, and of a wide acquaintance with 
the general history of the world, and with its most 
powerful literature. 

In the matter of the historical sequence, there is 
much to be said on both sides, for the chronologi- 
cal order, and for a partially inverted order ; but 
when all the arguments are weighed, the advantage 
seems to me to lie decidedly with the chronologi- 
cal sequence, the study in succession of Greek and 
Roman and mediaeval and modern history. In 
addition to the advantage of presenting the world- 
process in the natural order, the chronological 
sequence has the merit of allowing an objective 
treatment of ancient history, while the boys and 
girls are still young, and an easy passage to a more 
subjective method when we come to the more com- 
plex institutional history of our own country and 
time. The question of sequence, however, is of 
far less moment than the broader principle of treat- 
ing the history frankly as literature, and making 



YOUTH 227 

this whole group of studies — English, history, and 
literature — a bit of human work in which the 
boys and girls shall take a sincere interest and 
delight. 

The question of mathematics opens up a large 
and debatable territory. Like the poor, the prob- 
lem of turning boys and girls into even tolerable 
mathematicians seems ever with us. In four years, 
four hours per week, it is entirely possible to cover 
plane and solid geometry, elementary algebra and 
plane trigonometry, and to do it well, even assum- 
ing, as we do here, that the children in the lower 
schools have no mathematics beyond the elementary 
number work involved in gymnastic and sloyd. 
The most logical sequence seems to me to be plane 
geometry, algebra up to quadratics, solid geometry, 
advanced algebra, and plane trigonometry. In the 
majority of schools it is customary to have the 
elementary algebra precede the plane geometry, 
but the arrangement does not seem to be wise. 
Logically the geometry appears to deserve first 
place as the most graphic and comprehensible of 
all the lower mathematics. Arithmetic, as a sep- 
arate study, is omitted altogether from the curricu- 
lum of both the lower school and the high school, 
and this because it is better taught by implication 
in the gymnastic and sloyd, and also in the geo- 
metry and algebra. All the knotty problems of 
arithmetic can be better solved by algebra, and all 
the simple operations can be taught more effec- 
tively as they are met in daily school experience. 



228 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

The method of using the lesson hour for the 
purpose of study is quite as pertinent in mathe- 
matics as in the history-English group. An hour 
devoted to mathematics, not merely set aside and 
squandered in half work, but really devoted to 
hard, concentrated work, will accomplish much 
when repeated four times a week for four years. 
This devotion can best be secured when the teacher 
is right there to help and direct and encourage. 
A proposition in geometry clearly and slowly 
demonstrated by the teacher becomes a model in 
both English and mathematics, and at once sets a 
high standard of presentation. The boys and girls 
may repeat the work the same day, or if a longer 
interval be thought desirable, on the next lesson 
day, and in repeating the demonstrations learn 
them quite as thoroughly as if they had been droned 
over at home. The lesson can be made more alive 
and more helpful, if the chalk diagrams are some- 
times omitted, and mental diagrams be made to 
serve in their stead. This method of mental geo- 
metry, with which the reader is perhaps already 
familiar, is coming into more general use, and the 
testimony of those who have tried it is much in 
its favor. The demonstration proceeds exactly as 
in the older method, save that the proposition hav- 
ing been stated, the necessary diagram is dictated 
by the teacher or the student, and is constructed 
by the rest entirely as a mental diagram. In some 
instances color is used. The boys and girls are al- 
lowed to select whatever color they please as a back- 



YOUTH 229 

ground, and against this to construct such lines as 
will stand out most clearly. The less imaginative 
students follow the text-book in making use of a 
white background, with black lines. Others follow 
my own suggestion, and having a clear dark blue 
background, such as the color of the sky on a fine 
night, trace the lines of the diagram in silver white. 
The letters are the same shade as the lines. The main 
point is that the mental diagram shall be consistent 
and shall be held tenaciously throughout the entire 
demonstration. It is splendid mental gymnastic, 
for it cultivates both concentration of thought and 
a vivid, powerful imagination. Any wool-gather- 
ing, and one is completely lost. The imagination, 
acting in connection with a healthy, well-trained 
organism, is the open sesame to pretty much every- 
thing good that is good. It is at once the basis of 
all art-work, of all discovery and invention, of all 
true morality and progress ; in a word, it is essen- 
tial to the success of daily life. To image things 
in stone and marble, on canvas, in thought, in 
sound, things that never have been imaged ; to see 
things that never have been seen ; to put yourself 
in another's place, and so learn charity; to con- 
ceive a better society than has yet been realized, — 
all this is the high office of the imagination. As 
lovers of perfection, we must cultivate imagination 
in our children and in ourselves, remembering 
always, however, that it is a force for good only 
when working through a wholesome personality. 
In addition to this increase in general power and 



230 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

imagination, the mental geometry is a large practi- 
cal convenience. In solid geometry, for example, 
solids of revolution may be generated, planes may 
be passed, oblique figures may be righted, positions 
may be changed. The whole space world becomes 
fluid and obedient to the thought. Furthermore, 
one gains the power to turn a flat working drawing 
into machine or building, and in these temporary 
three dimensions to study the structure to far 
greater advantage. If our architects had this 
power of projection, I think we should be spared 
at least some of the dreadful buildings which now 
offend the eye. 

The method of mental geometry is difficult at 
first, and for certain orders of mind is always dif- 
ficult, but when once grasped, it brings a sense of 
mastery quite worth the effort. 

There are high-school children who are able to 
study three and four languages at the same time, 
and the operation is not uncommon, but they pay 
either the price of great superficiality or the price 
of neglecting nearly everything else. Either price 
is too great. In the old university at Bologna, 
they show you, with much pride, the library of 
Joseph Mezzofanti, who knew forty-two languages 
at the time of his death. But when you ask about 
his own contribution to life, it seems that he had 
nothing particular to say in any of them. Imagine 
forty-two vehicles moving solemnly across the field 
of vision, each vehicle without passenger or cargo. 
The procession would not be impressive. 



YOUTH 231 

The saner plan, in this matter of language, from 
the point of view of those of us who regard educa- 
tion as a purely human process, is to be as temper- 
ate in this as one is in food and drink. English 
has always the highest claim, since it is the medium 
of our own daily expression and the storehouse of 
our own most cherished traditions. But after this 
claim has been amply satisfied, one may profitably 
take up a second language, preferably a modern one, 
and follow it to the point of usability. There is 
a grave doubt, which Hamerton has expressed at 
some length in "The Intellectual Life," as to 
whether the average man can even know two 
languages intimately, his own and one other, know 
them so well that he can make them both and at 
the same time a true medium for his thought. This 
doubt becomes graver as the list is extended. But 
one may, in four years, gain a fair command of one 
modern language beside one's own, and this lin- 
guistic task is as large as the high school ought to 
undertake. With lessons an hour long, the work can 
easily be accomplished in school and quite without 
home study. There are, doubtless, many pleasant 
exceptions, but in general the work will come to 
much more if it is in the hands of a well-equipped 
compatriot. Those who have watched the perform- 
ance of the so-called " native " teacher — which is 
our somewhat illogical way of naming a foreigner — 
must feel, I think, with me, that however intimate 
his knowledge of pronunciation and idiom, his 
power to serve American children, even in impart- 



232 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

ing a knowledge of the language, is much less 
than the power of an able American teacher who is 
in touch with his boys and girls, and understands 
them in a way the foreign teacher never can. It 
stands to reason, too, that if an American, who 
makes it his special business to learn French or 
German, cannot succeed well enough to teach it 
acceptably, then the task of learning the language 
must be quite hopeless for average boys and girls, 
who, at best, must go in for it somewhat casually. 
Furthermore, as an agent of the American social 
purpose, the foreign teacher is manifestly and 
entirely disqualified. Neither the absolutism of 
Prussia nor the French passion for la gloire has 
any place or welcome in America. 

At half after twelve, the boys and girls go home 
for their dinner. In our present high schools the 
hours are usually from nine o'clock until two or 
three, with a half-hour intermission for a hurried 
cold lunch. This arrangement is made necessary 
by the tremendous distances, but it is a very bad 
arrangement, and is responsible for much indi- 
gestion and much general lack of health. No one 
who has taught in a high school can be blind to 
this fact. He must have detected the debilitating 
effects in his students, indeed, in himself as well, 
and yet we go on doing it just as if we did not 
know better. This thoroughly unhygienic plan is 
a serious menace to public health and vigor. In 
the small organic high school, near the homes 
which it is meant to serve, it is entirely possible for 



YOUTH 233 

the boys and girls to go home for dinner. The 
intermission of an hour and a half gives them a 
chance to have a brisk, healthful walk, a long 
breath of outdoor air, a direct touch of sunshine, 
and a hot, nourishing dinner. Not one of these 
things may be omitted without harm. 

The afternoon work begins at two, and is divided 
between science and hand-work. It ends at four. 
The occupations will be planned according to the 
tastes and aptitudes of the boys and girls, and will 
depend, too, upon local conditions and resources, 
Ordinarily, two afternoons a week will be given to 
laboratory science work, to physiography, physics, 
chemistry, and physiology, during the successive 
four years of the course, the instruction being 
touched by local color, and made as practical and 
concrete as possible. The boys and girls will want 
to know about the geology of the immediate local- 
ity, about the scientific principles involved in the 
local indiistries, about the physiographic features 
of the surrounding region, and these are all very 
good things for them to know about. Studied 
broadly, the science of one's surroundings may be 
made a basis of all scientific study. The habit of 
local investigation is a great good. In after life, if 
the young people move away from that particular 
locality, they will be very prone to make a study of 
their new environment, and come into intelligent 
relation with it. In four hours a week, it is im- 
possible to attain anything like an exhaustive 
treatment of the scientific branches named, but it 



234 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

is entirely possible to learn the large facts in each 
branch, and to come into the habit of careful scien- 
tific thought. 

I have placed the physiology last. From a hu- 
man point of view, it is vastly the most important 
of all the scientific studies. It ought to rest upon 
a thorough, elementary knowledge of physics and 
chemistry, in order that it may be scientific. It 
ought to be studied by minds which are reasonably 
mature, in order that it may be practical and sig- 
nificant. Given, as it usually is, to children of 
fourteen and fifteen, physiology is a stupid farce. 
Any one who doubts this statement has but to read 
the examination papers in physiology, presented 
either at entrance to the high school or shortly 
after admission. He will, I think, conclude with a 
more ancient philosopher that we are wonderfully 
and fearfully made. But physiology may be a 
large social service when taught to properly pre- 
pared boys and girls, already in their nineteenth 
year. 

In order to treat the physiology frankly and 
helpfully, it is well at present, and may be well 
for some generations to come, to put the boys and 
girls into separate classes. Ultimately, when the 
human body becomes more beautiful and more 
wholesome, it is to be hoped that we shall not be 
ashamed of it. 

To minister to the social purpose, the increase 
of human wealth, the physiology must deal with 
the five phases in the physical life, with the mys- 



YOUTH 235 

tery of birth, with the vital problems of nutrition 
and growth, with the important subject of repro- 
duction, with the grave question of death. Every 
normal life must meet these issues, and it is the 
office of education to idealize and perfect all that 
has to do with life. The instinct of reproduction 
is next in importance only to the instinct of self- 
preservation. It is the race instinct of self-pre- 
servation. Boys and girls, standing now on the 
threshold of manhood and womanhood, and al- 
ready conscious of the working of a new force, 
need the most careful and practical instruction, if 
this inevitable and tremendous force is to spend 
itself for social good instead of social evil. They 
must be taught in all reverence and sweet minded- 
ness the meaning of marriage and parenthood, the 
conditions of conception and birth, the hygiene of 
child and adult life. And finally, since the brief 
span of a man's life must be lived in the constant 
presence of possible death, our children must be 
brought up without fear of death, without the be- 
lief that death is an evil, but rather in that sweeter 
faith which grows out of an experience of the 
goodness of present life, the faith that this last 
great mystery, however profound, has still at the 
heart of it the same goodness. 

The remaining afternoons, three in number, may 
well be given to music, drawing, and manual train- 
ing. It would be a dissipation of thought to at- 
tempt all three subjects in six hours a week. As 
the children have had elementary instruction in all 



236 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

of them, they will have given some indication of 
taste and aptitude. It is well to follow this indica- 
tion, and to arrange the work accordingly. Sev- 
eral combinations at once suggest themselves ; such 
as a half hour each afternoon for music, followed 
by an hour and a half of manual training or of 
drawing. I should myself be most tenacious of 
the music, as the art-form of the cult of the Spirit. 
Perhaps the wisest plan would be to consider the 
music permanent, and to let the manual training 
and drawing alternate in periods of several weeks 
each. In most schools it will be preferred to give 
the boys and girls different subjects in manual 
training ; the boys, joinery, wood carving, pattern- 
making, moulding, ornamental iron work, chipping 
and filing, and machine construction ; the girls, 
joinery, wood carving, sewing, dressmaking, mil- 
linery, and cooking. The truer plan, I believe, is 
to exclude the more special forms, to look upon 
the high school as a time for more purely educa- 
tional work, and consequently to give the boys and 
girls precisely the same course. This general 
course might profitably include joinery, wood turn- 
ing, wood carving, clay modeling, plain sewing, 
plain cooking, and a practical course in nursing 
and hygiene. The present manual training schools 
are much too technical, more touched by the needs 
of the market than by human needs. This techni- 
cal education is exceedingly valuable, but it should 
come later. For the same reason, it seems to me 
that the drawing should be largely freehand line 



YOUTH 237 

and color work, and should include only the ele- 
ments of mechanical and architectural drawing. 

A school day, spent in this rational manner, and 
leaving plenty of time for a wholesome home life, 
might easily be repeated six times a week without 
being a burden. But the one free day is worth 
keeping for a different reason. It offers a fine 
opportunity for an enlargement of experience and 
for the doing of purely voluntary tasks. It can 
best be spent out of doors, on some well-planned 
expedition on foot or on the wheel. For this pur- 
pose good weather is required, and so it is far 
wiser to make the holiday a movable feast. It is 
also better to have it come in the middle of the 
week, since Sunday is a sufficient break between 
the ends. By making the holiday on Wednes- 
day, or, in case of storm, the first clear day after 
Wednesday, both of these conditions are as well 
fulfilled as our uncertain American weather will 
permit. The plan seems to me far wiser than the 
mechanical one of having the holiday always on 
a Saturday. In bad weather, and especially in 
winter, the young people are much better off in 
school than anywhere else, and every schoolboy 
knows how much more likely it is to rain on Satur- 
day than on any other day of the week. 

If the weather is persistently stormy, it may be 
wise to devote one school day in each week to 
voluntary occupations, letting the boys and girls 
spend the time in library or classroom, laboratory 
or workshop, wherever they are most interested, 



238 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

or wherever they may feel themselves a little defi- 
cient. Another important office of the free day 
is to help discover to the boys and girls those 
deeper interests on which the subsequent special 
work of life is to be founded. Remember that life 
in its larger aspects is as yet untasted, and they 
have small data for choice of subsequent vocation. 
At present, we have no free day. We have a 
nominal holiday, but so great is the pressure of 
school life that conscientious students, as I know 
very well, use the day to catch up in their work ; 
and in some institutions this so-called spare time 
is counted in when allotting the tasks of the week. 
A word about Sunday, and its influence. My 
own rule for the day is very simple. It is this : 
never do anything on Sunday so stupid that you 
would not be willing to do it on Monday, and 
never do anything on Monday so wicked that you 
would not be willing to do it on Sunday. On the 
whole I think this is a pretty good rule, for it is 
practical, and it is founded on the spirit of the 
newer commandment. It cuts out dull sermons, 
and squeaky organs, and singing through your nose 
out of tune, and ugly churches, and sanctimonious 
books and phrases, and cant and hypocrisy, and 
much else that is unbeautif ul and irreligious in our 
present mode of spending Sunday. And from the 
occupations of Monday, it quite as resolutely cuts 
out sharp bargaining and doubtful business prac- 
tices, and degenerate books and unclean plays, and 
much else that is a human desecration. It seems 



YOUTH 239 

to me a great advantage for children to go to 
church on Sunday, provided the church is made a 
delight instead of a duty, and provided the cler- 
gyman is a good man. One finds sacerdotalism, 
formalism, dogmatism, smooth phrases in the pul- 
pit, but one does not always find goodness. I have 
had a saintly clergyman tell me in all seriousness 
that he regarded the Quakers as worse than the 
heathen, because they had had the blessed sacra- 
ment offered to them and had refused it, — the 
Quakers, with their sweet, gentle, just lives ! I 
should not want one of my boys to come under 
such influence. The very air and sunshine would 
be a rebuke. It seems to me that a parent ought 
to scrutinize with great care the quality of the cler- 
gymen who presume to minister to the spiritual 
needs of his children. And he ought to scruti- 
nize with even greater care the curious material 
which, with the best intention in the world and 
frequently the worst preparation, offers itself for 
service in the Sunday-school. To permit persons 
to teach in the name of God on Sunday, who would 
not be permitted, in the name of the town, to 
teach during the week, is a shocking form of irre- 
ligion. Church - going and Sunday-school-going 
are far from being an unmixed good. They may 
even be the occasion of moral and religious harm. 
The same judgment must be applied to the church 
as to the other institutions of society. Morality 
requires the successful adaptation of means to 
ends, requires that we be causationists, that we be 



240 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

practical. A church which does not redeem the 
daily life stands as much condemned as a school 
which does not educate. Both fail to serve the 
social purpose, the increase of human wealth, and 
must be supplanted by something better. 

But the church, like the school, may be idealized, 
may be redeemed from commercialism, from insin- 
cerity, from formalism. The church, working with 
the school and the family, teaching what they teach, 
the high destiny of man, the splendor of life, the 
communion of the divine spirit, the immortality of 
the soul, may offer a service of such inspiration 
and such compelling beauty, that it will be of all 
possible ways of spending Sunday morning the 
very best way for those who seek the perfect life. 
But the church should be near the home. If the 
children cannot walk there, or cannot get there by 
an easy, pleasant drive, they had much better stop 
at home. If the near church is unideal and un- 
suitable, two courses are open. It may be avoided, 
or one may throw one's self into it and try to make 
it genuinely helpful to one's own children and to 
the community at large. It is hardly necessary to 
add that if this latter plan allows any promise of 
success, it is socially the nobler. The rest of Sun- 
day ought to be spent simply and naturally, with 
wholesome games and outdoor sports, with reading 
aloud and good comradeship. The worst possible 
use of the day is to waste it, and this one does 
when one gives one's self over to any sort of aim- 
less and incoherent occupation. 



YOUTH 241 

The school day ends at four, and the boys and 
girls leave the building with free hands and free 
hearts. There are no lunch baskets and no books 
to be carried home ; better still the day's school 
work is done, and there are no tasks to burden the 
spirit and interfere with the simple pleasures and 
duties of the home life. This freedom to live the 
fuller and more joyous life, to render unworried 
service to the busy mother and father, to enjoy 
their comradeship in serenity and leisure, to take 
the free playtime of the late afternoon without 
uncomfortable pricks of conscience, all this would 
quite justify the plan of using the school for the 
place of learning, were it not already justified on 
other grounds. Save in the very heart of winter, 
the period from four to six is a rare time for all 
sorts of outdoor delights. The earth is warmed 
with the day's sunshine ; the wind has a habit of 
going down with the sun ; the lights are soft and 
beautiful ; the illuminated walls and long slanting 
shadows add a touch of poetry to the dullest land- 
scape. One can imagine no finer playtime for 
boys and girls and for older people as well. It is 
a sacrilege that all these glories pass for the greater 
part unobserved ; that day after day the sun sinks 
into the golden west without causing a genuine 
thrill in thousands of waiting human hearts ; that 
one by one the stars take their places in the nightly 
drill of heaven, and the moon pours out her almost 
spiritual light, and we remain insensible. 

It is an easy nratter to remedy this. The rem- 



242 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

edy is to live and work in the present moment, and 
to keep quite sacred the breathing spaces when we 
may enjoy nature and enjoy one another. This 
free playtime, devoid of care and worry, devoid of 
the shadow of unfinished tasks, has as much to 
teach the children and young people, as much in- 
deed to teach us older ones, as the more serious 
work of the school and the profession. 

In every well-equipped high school there will be 
a swimming tank and gymnasium, open on alter- 
nate afternoons to the boys and girls, and here in 
stormy weather they will have a chance to take 
sufficient exercise to keep them in the best of 
health. They ought all to have learned to swim 
several years earlier, but should this duty have been 
omitted, the deficiency must be made good at once. 
Not only is the swimming one of the most perfect 
forms of physical exercise, but in the course of the 
busy, stirring lives which it is to be hoped all these 
boys and girls are going to live, a knowledge of 
how to swim may save their own or another life. 

Then, afterwards, comes the preparation of the 
evening meal, and later, the partaking of it. If 
the day has been well spent, the people who gather 
around the board are not tired out and silent. 
They are still companionable. They have the sat- 
isfaction which comes from worthy tasks well per- 
formed. There is a pleasant sense of rest and 
peace, the quiet interchange of the day's experi- 
ences. This evening meal, after a busy, happy 
day, may be a bit of genuine fine art. At its best, 



YOUTH 243 

it is a simple meal, but it lends itself to artistic 
treatment. It were well to begin with the illumi- 
nation, — " Let the lower lights be burning." It 
were well to bring out the silver candlesticks if 
you have them, and the best china, for you will 
never be supping more worthy guests. Remember, 
you are entertaining the children of the state, the 
future men and women of the commonwealth, the 
cup-bearers of all progress. And it were well for 
such guests as these to bring out the best talk, the 
noblest, the wittiest, the most entertaining, the most 
inspiring, and to encourage your guests, the young 
people and the children, to give of their best, too. 
You, perhaps, recall the incident of the French ser- 
vant, who whispered to her mistress, the hostess, — 
" Another anecdote, madame, the roast is burned. " 
A social man can do almost everything in life quite 
alone, with some degree of success, except to eat 
alone, and this social instinct is well worth culti- 
vating in our young people. It is wise to bear in 
mind that man was a social animal before he was 
human, and that his becoming human is perhaps a 
direct result of his being social. But this social 
instinct can nowhere else be so successfully culti- 
vated as right here in the home circle. In the 
family group, with the father and mother and the 
grandparents and the little ones, our high school 
boys and girls are very charming, but they are 
much less charming, and much less successful, when 
they attempt society by themselves. It is apt to be 
frivolous and self-conscious, even insincere, for it is 



244 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

founded on such inadequate social experience. It is 
the sort of society which wears itself out in a very 
few years, and leaves men and women, not yet in 
their prime, quite stranded and cast aside. One sees 
much of this immature society in America, and it 
is not desirable. The best social success does not 
come to youth, for youth has not yet a sufficiently 
serious contribution to offer, to make the best soci- 
ety possible ; it comes to men and women who have 
spent their youth in quieter and more sheltered 
ways. Society is strengthened by every act of 
temperance; by keeping children, children; and 
youth, youth. The more ideal plan is to have no 
formal " coming out," with its early extinguish- 
ment, but into this braver and more inclusive soci- 
ety to have one entered for the rest of life. 

Every evening meal, however simple, may be a 
veritable feast if love spread the table and clever- 
ness serve it. And then, afterwards, comes the 
delightful home evening, its talk and music, its 
reading aloud and its games, an evening quite 
unshadowed by school tasks of any kind, and 
given over in frank joyousness to social inter- 
course and pleasure. And now it is nine o'clock, 
— or half after ; the day is done, and our young 
people must be off to bed. The beauty sleep must 
all be got before midnight. 

To be successful, the educational process of 
youth must provide for the wholesome life of the 
body and the mind and the heart ; it must preserve 
the simple, sensuous, passionate life in all its purity 



YOUTH 245 

and integrity ; it must avoid premature manhood 
and womanhood ; it must include all youth ; it 
must cover the entire twenty-four hours ; it must 
limit itself resolutely to the present moment. If 
the programme outlined in this chapter does all 
these things, then it is the true process of the 
social purpose, and deserves our most loyal alle- 
giance. Each change we make in the programme 
must be along these lines, and must be for the 
increase of our total human wealth. 



CHAPTER VIII 

HOLIDAYS 

One hears much talk in America about our not 
having enough holidays, and, by way of argument, 
one is asked to regard the care and pressure and 
nervous prostration all too visible in the daily pro- 
cession of our social life. So convincing is the 
argument that I, for one, have been wholly con- 
verted by it, and quite seriously would be for 
making every day a holiday. Life is so great a 
possession, so unending a procession of delightful 
possibilities, that each day ought to be a new glad- 
ness, each night a fresh benediction. It is alto- 
gether a monstrous thing to make it otherwise, to 
admit into any day a spirit less joyful and radiant 
than the spirit of the best holiday. Is love not 
immortal ; is beauty not a reality ; is space not the 
home of angelic hosts ; is charity not the greatest 
thing in the world ; are men not our brothers ; is 
the best not our destiny ? To realize this, to real- 
ize, that is to say, the splendor of life, would be to 
make each day a veritable holiday. 

However, a holiday is not a thing to waste. It 
is a day to make the very most of. At best, it is 
all too short. But at present, holiday-making in 



HOLIDAYS 247 

America is not a very beautiful operation. It con- 
sists for the most part of lounging and rowdyism 
and dissipation and forced fun. The human spirit, 
bowed down by care and pressure and nervous 
prostration and illness, cannot at once respond to 
the glad spirit of the new day. It can only lounge 
or shout. So unideal is our popular holiday-making 
that at such times gentler people do not stir abroad, 
and on such a holiday, one is tempted to wish, not 
that we had more of them, but rather that we had 
none of them at all. To make a holiday one must 
have the true holiday spirit, and this is not subject 
to command, — has a way of refusing to act inter- 
mittently. To be successful, our holiday-making 
must be continuous, — every day must be a holi- 
day. And so it would be if we were bent on carry- 
ing out the social purpose and went in unreservedly 
for human wealth. 

I do not propose to stop the wheels of enterprise, 
but only to have them spin more merrily and more 
sanely. The work of the world would get done 
easily enough, even if life were an unending holi- 
day, that is, all the work that is worth doing, for, 
rightly handled, work is the greatest fun of all the 
fun that is ; only you must bring to it good health 
and high spirit and a love for the beautiful ; and 
the work itself must be worthy, not cheap and 
nasty stuff, unnecessary toil that one can take no 
interest in, but sturdy, honest, manly work that 
you can put your heart into, and do because you 
have chosen to do it, and would rather do just that 



248 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

particular thing than anything else in the whole 
round world. 

I say all this because I believe it to be true, 
or, rather, because I know it to be true. I choose, 
myself, to work, sometimes to work very hard in- 
deed, so that the friendly doctor calls, " Temper- 
ance ; " but it is self-chosen, delightful work. When 
you do what you want to do, honestly and squarely, 
it does not at all deserve to be called work, but is 
the most splendid sort of play, and every day is a 
holiday. Now I am obliged to believe that in this 
compelling desire of mine for some form of grati- 
fying activity, I am not at all unique, but am to 
that extent simply wholesome and normal. For I 
see hundreds of men and women all around me, 
friends, acquaintances, strangers, doing precisely 
the same thing, working, not from the pressure of 
want, but in obedience to that inner necessity 
which makes activity a condition of health and 
happiness. We joyous workers neither deserve 
nor ask any credit for all this activity. It is true 
that we plume ourselves a little bit on our wis- 
dom, our wisdom in knowing how to be happy ; but 
that is all. We might give up our work, and join 
the crowd of overfed, idle folk that you may meet 
any winter down in Florida, or on the Riviera, but 
we have no desire to be so sadly bored. We pre- 
fer the fun of life, the splendid, self-chosen, useful, 
welcome work. 

This answer only hints at how the pleasant 
work of the world would get done. It seems to 
quite leave out of sight the many hideous tasks 



HOLIDAYS 249 

which now cast their shadow over the daily life of 
civilization. This is entirely true, but the inner 
necessity is still adequate to all social demands. 
The hideous tasks are unnecessary, and had much 
better be left undone. There are sad tasks, like 
burying our dead ; there are homely tasks, like 
providing food and shelter and clothing ; there are 
laborious tasks, like hewing wood and drawing 
water ; there are exacting tasks involved in con- 
struction and transportation, and in investigation 
of all kinds. But one may lend a willing hand and 
do one's sturdy, manly share in all necessary work, 
and still decline to be an undertaker or a head- 
waiter or a contractor or a shop-keeper. There 
is no trace of merit in doing unworthy work for 
unworthy people, or extremely disagreeable work 
for corresponding hire. Large dividends are won 
by all sorts of hideous, brutal, fatal work, but that 
never produces human wealth, never renders loyal 
service to the social purpose. If we described 
it at all in the plain speech of our own philoso- 
phy, we should have to call such activity by a 
very ugly name. We should have to call it treach- 
ery to the social purpose, treachery on the part of 
those who organize such work, and treachery on the 
part of those who do it. As a loyal citizen of the 
social commonwealth, I must oppose this false ac- 
tivity to the utmost of my power. I must call it 
by its right name. I must make it less and less 
possible. I must fight it on every side. And the 
great and ever available weapon of attack is through 
the channel of men's ideas. This turning of our 



250 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

legitimate, life-long holiday into days of human 
drudgery will quite disappear from off the face of 
the earth as soon as we, the workers, will it to be 
so, as soon as we declare once and for all against 
this false activity, and in favor of necessary, whole- 
some, beautiful work. 

This little preface is meant to lead up to the 
question of school holidays. 

At the present time, that is to say, during these 
years of grace at the opening of the twentieth 
century, our private high schools are in session for 
about one hundred and fifty days out of the three 
hundred and sixty-five days in the year, and our 
public high schools for about one hundred and 
eighty days. The private schools begin work about 
the first of October. They have two days' holiday 
at Thanksgiving, two weeks at Christmas, two weeks 
at Easter, and various single days throughout the 
year. They stop work very early in June, giving al- 
most four months' holiday in summer. As a rule, 
the more expensive the school, the shorter the total 
session. The public schools have about the same 
holidays, but somewhat shortened. They are in ses- 
sion about one half the total year. 

These facts are familiar to all persons who know 
anything about our metropolitan school systems, 
and particularly familiar to those parents who are 
much puzzled to dispose of their children wisely 
during the long periods of time when there is no 
school. But the facts are worth reciting when we 
come to consider the problem of holidays. We 



HOLIDAYS 251 

should also add the fact that, in spite of this very 
short school session, many children break down 
under it completely, and must be withdrawn, while 
of those in nominal attendance a large percentage 
are always absent on account of illness and for 
other causes. In Massachusetts, the actual attend- 
ance is 143.5 days out of 180 days. 

All of these facts, taken together, present con- 
siderable material for thought. And this material 
is increased when we come to regard the teachers. 
Although working on half time, as it were, com- 
pared to the other vocations, and occupied only 
half the year, teachers, as a class, present less 
than normal strength and vigor. So common is 
the expression, "a broken-down teacher," that it 
hardly attracts one's attention, and arouses only a 
very faint sympathy, the sort of sympathy that we 
give to old age and other inevitable calamities. 

To one who regards education as a practical 
process by which we realize the social purpose, it 
would seem that the process is singularly inter- 
mittent to be in activity less than one quarter of 
the day, and less than one half the year. If the in- 
quiry were not on the face of it entirely absurd, one 
would be tempted to ask whether the social purpose 
is likewise intermittent, a fever which comes and 
goes, and leaves the patient quite incapable of ef- 
fort during fully three quarters of the waking year. 

Or, it may be that the social purpose is divided 
between the school and the home, giving the lion's 
share, that is, seven eighths of the total year, to the 



252 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

home. This is a practical view of the matter, but 
it is not carried out with any degree of practicality, 
that is to say, it is not carried out morally. If 
this very big lion's share, the share of a very roar- 
ing lion, belong properly to the home, it would 
seem that by far the more important part of edu- 
cation consists in instructing the home, and that 
a true state normal school ought to devote seven 
eighths of its time to the enlightenment of fathers 
and mothers, and one eighth to the narrower peda- 
gogy of the school. But this is not done, and, as 
we all know, even in the schools themselves, the 
question of parenthood and its tremendous social 
duties is hardly touched upon at all. That is to 
say, we leave this immense slice of the educational 
process quite unprovided for, leave it to youug, 
inexperienced, unguided, often wholly uncultivated, 
persons, and the result is our present mixed pro- 
gramme of experiment and neglect, — largely neg- 
lect. Now, whether we so esteem it or not, the 
educational process is bound to cover the whole 
twenty-four hours. Even in sleep there is no es- 
cape. Cause and effect are busily at work. 

" That which ye sow, ye reap. See yonder fields ! 
The sesanium was sesamum, the corn 
Was corn. The silence and the darkness knew ! 
So is a man's fate born." 

And the distressing, or, perhaps, the wholesome, 
part of it is that in the final counting up of results, 
ignorance is no extenuation. The boy, sleeping in 
a vitiated atmosphere, eating improper food, wear- 



HOLIDAYS 253 

ing unsuitable clothes, reading unfit books, asso- 
ciating with vulgar companions, falling into vicious 
habits, must reap the corresponding harvest, how- 
ever ignorant he or his parents. By so much is 
the social purpose defeated and the educational 
process made of no avail. And we must remem- 
ber that it is not alone the social sacrifice of one 
individual man. His influence and his children 
must also be counted. 

Now this social failure of the home is so man- 
ifest, and the recognition of it so widespread, that 
on all sides one sees the beginning of a movement 
to provide rational occupation for children during 
at least a part of their large holiday time. On 
Saturdays, one hears of morning classes in wood- 
work or sewing or cooking or gymnastic; one 
meets a young college man with a troop of lively 
boys, bent on a day's outing in the country. Dur- 
ing the long summer vacation, the metropolitan 
boards of education, even the more intelligent 
towns, especially in New England, are establishing 
the so-called vacation schools on the very spot and 
in the very buildings declined for summer usage by 
the older education ; while for those who can afford 
to pay for them, numerous summer camps for boys, 
and now even for girls, are springing up in the 
mountains and at the seashore. Both of these 
movements, for the rescue of Saturday and for the 
rescue of the summer, seem to me eminently whole- 
some. But I want to call attention to the fact 
that at present these movements, for the greater 



254 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

part, reach only the poor and the moderately well- 
to-do. The Saturday classes and the vacation 
schools are mainly in the slum districts and pro- 
vide only for the poorer children, while the Satur- 
day outings in charge of college men and the sum- 
mer camps in charge of specialists are from their 
very nature available only for families of some 
means. The great middle class, the bulk of our 
population, is as yet quite unprovided for. 

One sees then, at the present time, a shrinking 
school year, and an increasing outside movement 
to fill up the gap. Is this logical? I propose to 
inquire. 

It must seem even to the friends of the estab- 
lished order that in the official school year the 
holiday plays an excessive part. From whatever 
point of view you look at it, a school process, which 
covers directly only one eighth of the time, which 
limits itself to seven or eight months out of the 
twelve, which spills over into the home life not in 
a cooperative way but as an interruption, which 
entirely abdicates during four or five months of 
the year, cannot be looked upon as a social process 
of any high degree of efficiency. Yet this prac- 
tice is so general in America that one is forced to 
believe that it rests either upon some underlying 
necessity or upon some principle which commends 
itself to the judgment of serious minded people. 
It is our present business to find this out. As far 
as I can discover, the Saturday holiday is prompted 
by the feeling that school children deserve some 



HOLIDAYS 255 

pleasure, and that all work and no play makes 
Jack a dull bov : the Thanksgiving holiday. Wash- 
ington's birthday. Lincoln's birthday, and the rest 
are given for the same reason, and from a laudable 
desire to keep in mind those American sentiments 
not too prominently exemplified in current political 
life ; the Christmas and Easter vacations have a 
touch of religious sentiment, though, the latter holi- 
day does not always correspond with the festival 
itself and is becoming increasingly merely a spring 
vacation. They must be counted with the long 
summer vacation as a necessary let-up in the grind 
of the school year. The summer vacation has the 
additional argument that American cities are ex- 
cessively hot in summer and that the children sim- 
ply cannot study during the heated term. TVe may 
further add' that the long vacation gives the chil- 
dren, whose parents can afford it, a chance to get 
a taste of country life, and that in the country it 
gives the children an opportunity to help in the 
garden and harvest field. 

I believe this to be a fair statement of the raison 
d'etre 'of our present excessive school holidays. If 
not. the reader must make such correction of the 
statement as his own larger experience enables him 
to do. 

From my own point of view, the point of view 
which it is the purpose of the present volume to 
set forth, these arguments have little to commend 
them. Taken in their entirety, they are wholly 
inadequate. Let us examine them one by one. 



256 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

It is perfectly true, not only that school children 
deserve some, pleasure, but that they deserve much 
pleasure, the most that we can bring into their 
lives. It is perfectly true that even a good deal of 
work and a very little play makes Jack a dull boy. 
But pleasure is not a commodity, a sort of sweet 
bun that you can buy at the baker's for a penny. 
It is a quality, and like all human qualities has its 
degrees of moral worth and worthlessness. The 
factory hand, relieved for a day from the dull grind 
of uninteresting work, finds it a pleasure to simply 
lounge on the corner. The laborer, hungry and 
exhausted, finds pleasure in the warmth and stimu- 
lus of a glass of grog. The schoolboy, set free 
from tasks which he does not care for, finds plea- 
sure in almost any form of laziness or aimless ex- 
ercise. But all of these are cheap and nasty forms 
of pleasure, and cannot be seriously recommended 
in the name of education. Pleasure must be by 
contrast, but we do not want it to be contrast with 
undesirable things. We want it to be pleasure 
when contrasted with all possible ways of occupying 
the moment. The highest pleasures for children 
and for boys and girls are those occupations which, 
when contrasted with all possible occupations, will 
bring the greatest amount of gratification. It is a 
moral world, through and through, and that is best 
which brings the best result. Otherwise we should 
have no means of recognizing the best. The aim 
and proper method of education is to provide the 
best possible occupations, and being a culture pro- 



HOLIDAYS 257 

cess, the best possible occupations for the present 
moment. Consequently it makes each day abso- 
lutely and literally a holiday. For children we con- 
ceive the best occupations to be largely bodily, — 
activity touched with sentiment ; for youth, to be 
partly bodily and increasingly intellectual, — activ- 
ity touched with both thought and sentiment. At 
their best, the holiday and the school day are iden- 
tical. How could it be otherwise ? Both serve the 
same purpose, — the increase of human wealth, — 
and both mean the best possible spending of the 
day. There seems to me no theoretical ground for 
the Saturday holiday ; and, indeed, were we truly 
religious, and did we import into each day its true 
measure of reverence and love, its true worship of 
the Spirit, there would be no occasion for the Sun- 
day holiday, since the office of priest and teacher 
would merge into one. But as this is considerably 
further on than we have yet got, we may hold it as 
a goal rather than as a present plan for any large 
majority of schools. So I have been led to recom- 
mend no Saturday holiday in the process of child- 
hood, and in the process of youth a weekly holiday 
only when the weather is fair, and the day can be 
used to better advantage than in the school itself. 

I am not saying that our present school day is a 
holiday for either teacher or student. In the very 
best of our schools it is, but they are exceedingly 
rare institutions. In the majority of our schools it 
is very far from being the case. The school day 
is an admitted grind, and the holiday a blessed 



258 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

relief. If this is the necessary character of school 
days, why of course the more holidays the better. 
Instead of two holidays a week, let us have three 
or five or even seven. This would in all serious- 
ness be an excellent plan, if we then started out 
to utilize the holidays and to make them serve the 
social purpose. But it would be a still more ex- 
cellent plan, and far more logical, if we stopped the 
shrinkage at once, and turned each school day into 
a holiday, a day so wisely spent that at the end 
of it one would be so much stronger and so much 
more refreshed than at the beginning that one 
would be still better prepared to meet the morrow, 
and no let-up would be necessary. This would be 
infinitely better than exhausting our material and 
then trying somewhat ineffectively to restore it, 
and to bring it back to concert pitch. 

We may well retain the holidays of religion 
and humanity, — Thanksgiving, Christmas, Wash- 
ington's and Lincoln's birthdays, Easter, and May 
day, — but we could somewhat improve our man- 
ner of keeping them. Especially we might well 
omit the holiday habit of over-eating. In primitive 
times, when the food supply was somewhat precari- 
ous and uncertain, one way of celebrating the advent 
of plenty, and so coming even, as it were, with the 
wolf, was to make a feast and eat and drink much 
more than was good for you. But in these more 
abundant times upon which we are fallen, when we 
are all reasonably sure of three good square meals 
a day, there really seems no particular excuse for 



HOLIDAYS 259 

doubling up and eating two meals at once. We 
had much better celebrate these days by making 
them the occasion of renewed inspiration and re- 
newed courage. The Harvest-home, the Springtide, 
the Resurrection, the birthdays of great and good 
men, might well come to us fraught with meaning 
and delight, and we should be losing much to give 
up these special times and seasons. 

And now I come to the question of the summer 
vacation. Granting that a rational school process 
which refreshes and vitalizes, instead of exhausting 
and depressing, makes a holiday under ordinary 
conditions both unnecessary and undesirable, there 
still remains the question of summer heat, of the 
country outing, and of child labor. Let us take 
them up one by one. 

The summer heat in American cities is a mat- 
ter of too vivid experience to need any discussion. 
It is not limited to July and August. Any time 
from the first of June to the first of October we 
are liable to periods of such excessive heat that 
the ordinary occupations of life, and especially the 
ordinary school process, can only be carried on at 
great discomfort and at great disadvantage. The 
condition is not exceptional, but annual, and must 
be met and provided for. Our present provision is 
most inadequate. The private schools, as we have 
seen, simply close ; and since all of their children 
are commonly sent into the co'untry, it is perhaps 
the most sensible thing that they could do. The 
public schools brave a part of June and some of the 



260 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

most trying heat of September, with results which 
are sometimes directly fatal and always widely 
disastrous. The ordeals of June are particularly 
burdensome, the examinations, graduations, promo- 
tions, and it is a pale, limp lot of both children and 
teachers who finally disband towards the end of 
the month. If one did not know better, one would 
be tempted to ask, " Have they been very ill ? 
Are they just out of the hospital, all these peo- 
ple ? " But one knows only too well that they are 
just out of school. And then, finally, when the 
schools do close, what happens ? The heat is not 
disposed of, and neither are the children. A few 
of them get off to the country. A few of the most 
weakly of them get a short respite through the 
fresh-air fund and the country-week association ; 
but the majority of them remain just where they 
were, save that instead of being occupied in fairly 
decent schoolrooms, they are in the hot, dirty street, 
or in the small, close houses. And meanwhile the 
social purpose is at a standstill, is, perhaps, having 
negative work done for it; its formal agent has 
abdicated. 

This plan of unconditional surrender is neither 
brave nor wise nor economic. In reality, it is not 
such a dreadful enemy, the heat. It simply intro- 
duces a distinct condition into the day's problem, 
and, if properly met, the heat may be made a 
source of pleasure and good instead of a source of 
pain and evil. To suggest only a few of the 
simple physical benefits which come with warm 



HOLIDAYS 261 

weather, we have a more plentiful supply of fresh 
air in our houses than at any other season of the 
year ; we have more opportunity to be in the open, 
and particularly, at night, an opportunity to enjoy 
the moonshine and the starlight ; we may wear 
much less clothing, a freedom which children espe- 
cially appreciate ; we may have frequent swimming 
and bathing, one element of a boy's heaven. 

Instead, then, of giving up, simply surrendering, 
suppose we inquire what the educational process 
might do with the summer by way of carrying out 
the social purpose. Acting in conjunction with 
the heat, instead of in defiance of it, much splendid 
work can be done. In fact, in the matter of human 
possibilities, the summer is the very richest season 
of the whole year. The days are the longest, the 
nights are the balmiest, vegetation is at its height. 
Nature is in her most exuberant mood. It is a 
rare season, and I can but pity the man or woman 
or child who does not hail its return with a full 
and welcoming heart. It may be a breath of Pan, 
but it seems to me almost an irreligious thing not 
to rejoice in all this fertility and bounty and love- 
liness. Education loses a tremendous opportunity 
if she does not go hand in hand with Nature 
through all the long, glad days of summer. Now 
two practical plans at once suggest themselves by 
which the educational process can be carried with 
advantage through the warm weather. The most 
ideal plan, and the only one which will finally sat- 
isfy the social conscience, is the plan of sending all 



262 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

the children of the city out into the country. The 
•second plan, which has the advantage of being 
immediately applicable, but which must be looked 
upon as merely transitional, is the plan of keeping 
the schools open all the year and adapting both the 
buildings and the occupations to the exigencies of 
warm weather. Both plans open such large vistas 
that they may not be discussed at full length, but 
we may at least touch upon them. 

The first plan is not so wild as it may at first 
sound, and is not at all Utopian, but a practical, 
socially economic suggestion. We undertake much 
more tremendous enterprises in the name of indi- 
vidual and corporate greed, and carry them to a 
successful conclusion. This enterprise is far more 
important. A city which can boast a clean, healthy, 
moral, beauty-loving population would need no 
other objects of civic pride, for all else would be 
added unto it. But this work of personal redemp- 
tion must begin with the children, and a causation- 
ist may well take the ground that any movement, 
however costly and difficult, is still socially eco- 
nomic if it produce a better breed of men. To 
take the children of a city to the country for four 
months means the desertion of their homes for 
that period, the provision of temporary country 
homes, the employment of an army of people to 
instruct and care for them, and finally the com- 
plete separation from the parents and the conse- 
quent breaking of home ties. It means also a 
rather dismal summer for the mother and father 



HOLIDAYS 263 

left behind in the city. These difficulties are over- 
whelming, and there would still remain the ques- 
tion, if this pure air, better water, greater freedom, 
simpler life, closer touch with Nature, are good 
during four months, why not five, six, twelve 
months? And this practically is the solution. It 
is not the temporary exodus of the children for 
four months, with its undesirable separations and 
uneconomic duplicating of the apparatus of life, 
but the permanent exodus of the family group into 
surroundings more conducive to the ideal life. It 
is the re-populating of the country, and the shrink- 
age of the city, that is, as a place of residence. 

Cities have not builded themselves. They are 
the outward expression of perfectly distinct social 
forces. Withdraw these forces, turn them into 
other channels, and the cities are as doomed as if 
an earthquake had jostled them. The primary 
motive may well have been protection. The walled 
city is the earliest type, and for a long time the 
only type. But this necessity has long since passed. 
Many of the towns and cities of Europe retain 
their ancient walls on account of their picturesque- 
ness and historical interest, and possibly because 
of their attractiveness to the tourist world, to the 
crowds of American, English, and German money- 
makers who now bring gold and moral desolation 
to many of the fairest spots of Europe. But many 
of the towns and cities have leveled their own 
walls, and turned the sites of them into peaceful, 
tree -lined promenades. This first motive, that of 



264 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

protection, may be quite dismissed. The second 
motive, I should say, was and is the natural gre- 
gariousness of the human race, a very real motive, 
and one from which much good may be made to 
flow. We like to be together. We like the touch 
of human fellowship. We are social by instinct ; 
and when modern society wishes to impose its cru- 
dest torture, it dooms a man to solitary confine- 
ment. The city is an expression of this gregarious- 
ness. The country was formerly a denial of it. A 
scattered population, very poor roads, exceedingly 
inadequate means of locomotion, made the isola- 
tion of the country a real hardship and added 
much to the attracting force of the city. The 
most successful country life in America was in the 
South. The large plantation was a community in 
itself. The mansion was large and well peopled, 
— the master and his immediate family, the cousins 
and other relatives, the crowds of arriving and 
departing guests, the numerous house servants. 
The slave quarters were even more populous. In 
a world so gay and so toiling there was little 
chance for loneliness. Had it all rested upon 
something better than human slavery on the one 
side, and bodily laziness on the other, it would 
have been difficult to have supplanted these patri- 
archal groups by the present hideous industrial 
towns of the South. 

But new forces are at work, forces which may 
make the country more sociable in its possibilities 
than the city itself. In the first place, the holdings 



HOLIDAYS 265 

are necessarily smaller. The abolition of slavery 
and the growing scarcity of even paid labor — 
a scarcity which I for one rejoice to see, since it 
means an increase of democracy — have made it 
increasingly impossible for one man to successfully 
operate a farm of several hundred or several thou- 
sand acres. A small, well-cultivated garden plot 
of ten or twenty acres is more profitable. Further- 
more, the change in the national diet, the dimin- 
ished use of meat and the increased consumption 
of vegetables, grains, and fruits, must be taken 
into consideration. Many families which formerly 
had meat two or even three times a day now have 
it once, and a few are dispensing with its use alto- 
gether. This reduces the long stretches of pasture 
land, and brings about a more intensive and more 
highly civilized culture of the soil ; moving the 
farmhouses much nearer together, and giving a 
highly evolved agricultural community the aspect 
of a well-laid-out and charming village. I have 
been on these small garden-farms in California 
where the year's profit from a single acre was one 
thousand dollars. I have not the exact figures at 
hand, but taking the average production per acre 
and the market price of staple commodities, and 
then reducing the total by the necessary cost of 
cultivation and transportation, and one reaches 
very meagre net returns, in many cases not over 
five or ten dollars per acre, in many cases consider- 
ably under the smaller of these figures. Ours, for 
example, is notably a wheat growing country. I 



266 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

have seen wheat fields in Idaho which produced 
one hundred and five bushels to the acre ! But 
the average yield from these great factory farms 
of the West is not in the most favorable years over 
sixteen bushels per acre. Taking the present price 
of wheat, one can see that the only way to make 
such meagre returns commercially possible is the 
socially impossible present method of working im- 
mense farms with cheap, ignorant labor, but little 
better than the slave labor of the ante-bellum days. 
Social evolution means, then, the diminished acre- 
age of farms and the increased neighborliness of 
farmers. 

To this must be added two vastly important fac- 
tors, good roads and our marvelously improved 
methods of locomotion. The good roads come with 
the more intensive culture of the land. We can- 
not afford to build good roads through large, slov- 
enly farms. There is not enough money to do it. 
We must put up with mud lanes just as we must 
put up with cheap and nasty barbed wire fences. 
Good roads are expensive. They are only possible 
where there are many people to use them, people 
with decent living incomes in their pockets. But 
with country houses moderately near together, and 
good roads in between them, an automobile, a bi- 
cycle, a modern easy-running wagon, even a pair 
of sturdy legs, satisfies the conditions of the most 
exacting gregariousness and makes country life 
eminently social. The same facilities make it just 
as possible to have lectures, concerts, and plays, — 



HOLIDAYS 267 

that is, if the people want them, — even libraries, 
gymnasiums, and the best of schools. None of the 
reputed advantages of the city need be omitted. 

There are six hundred and forty acres in a 
square mile. If you take sixteen square miles, 
divide them into homesteads of twenty acres, and 
allow six people to each family group, you will 
have a total of three thousand and seventy-two 
persons, a community large enough, if so minded, 
to attain every social advantage. Now take a 
piece of paper and draw on it a large square, divid- 
ing it into sixteen smaller squares, four on a side. 
Draw the two diagonals crossing in the centre and 
mark the centre C. With C as a centre, and radii 
equal respectively to one side and to two sides of a 
small square, incribe the smaller and the larger cir- 
cles. Let the diagram represent a map of such a 
community as we are considering, and let the diago- 
nals and cross-lines, with such branches as may be 
necessary, stand for good roads. It will be seen 
at a glance that the most remote households from 
the centre of community life will be those at the 
ends of the diagonals, but they will be only y/8 
miles away, or 2.83 miles, and the roads being 
good, such a distance could be readily covered 
by a bicycle or automobile in fifteen or twenty 
minutes. About sixty per cent, will live between 
the two circles, and will consequently be between 
one and two miles from the centre of things ; while 
almost twenty per cent, will live within the smaller 
circle and will be within a mile of C. Suppose 



268 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

that at C we reserve two hundred and forty acres 
for public uses, — park, experiment station, race- 
course, fields for outdoor sports, and sites for pub- 
lic buildings. This dispossesses twelve families, 
leaving a community of just three thousand souls, 
— allowing one soul for each body, which is the 
proportion we hope ultimately to attain. 

Such a township of three thousand souls could 
amply support a first-class supply store ; a post 
office, express, telephone and telegraph station ; a 
repair shop ; a hotel ; a large and beautiful public 
building, with a theatre for lectures, concerts, and 
plays, a university such as will be described in the 
next chapter, a gymnasium, a swimming tank, a 
public library and reading-room, a science bureau 
in connection with the experiment station ; and 
finally, the offices for the local government. In 
addition, this public campus might be made the 
site for one or more churches, for a public cream- 
ery, and for such industries and manufactures as 
the locality made desirable. 

These advantages, great as they are, are not 
illusory. They are quite within reach of any three 
thousand souls who want them, and they are much 
in excess of the advantages offered by any present 
city in America. Many of the reputed advantages 
of the city are indeed out-and-out illusion. Lec- 
tures for the most part are given to persons who 
do not particularly need them, to the classes rather 
than to the masses ; concerts are expensive and are 
several miles off; while the theatres, when good, 



HOLIDAYS 269 

are likewise expensive, and when cheap and poor 
are hardly to be reckoned as part of the culture 
process. 

This arrangement of a township four miles 
square is only one out of many possible arrange- 
ments, and has been chosen because it is the sim- 
plest. It may be worth remarking that in sixteen 
square miles of territory there would, in the East 
at least, be very likely to be one or more first-rate 
water powers which might be utilized by the com- 
munity for electrical purposes, both traction and 
lighting. In such a case, in place of arranging our 
sixteen squares in a perfect square, it might be bet- 
ter to arrange them in a rectangle, eight squares 
long by two broad. The centre, C, would then be 
one mile from each side and four miles from each 
end. ' An electric tram line, eight miles long, pass- 
ing from end to end through the centre, would still 
further reduce the practical distance of each house- 
hold from the centre. Half the entire population 
would be less than half a mile from the public 
tram, and the other half would be less than a mile. 
Such a tram could safely be run fifteen miles an 
hour, or a mile in four minutes. The most remote 
citizen would be less than a mile from a tram 
which would in sixteen minutes take him to the 
social centre. 

My sole purpose in going into these details is 
to point out that country life may be made just as 
social as city life. I have assumed in the illustra- 
tion chosen that the township is self-supporting ; 



270 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

that is, that each family makes its living off of the 
twenty-acre garden-farm, with possibly some slight 
share in the industrial life at the centre. If the 
industrial activities were still greater, it would be 
possible to reduce the holdings to ten or even five 
acres, doubling or quadrupling the population while 
still preserving the wholesome freedom of the coun- 
try. Finally, if the township were connected by 
rapid transit with the city, and the city were still 
retained as the bread-and-butter centre, the hold- 
ings might be reduced to one acre, and the town- 
ship still preserve the aspect of a very roomy and 
beautiful village. An acre is about 207 feet 
square. If half of this were used for lawn, orchard, 
and building site, and the other half cultivated in- 
tensively as a garden, it would be possible to almost 
feed a family of six, and much reduce the demand 
for outside resources. 

Protection and gregariousness built the cities of 
the olden time. In the century just ended there 
came a still more powerful force, a force which 
has led to their multiplication and astonishing ex- 
tension. It was the force of commercialism. The 
city is preeminently the institution of the market. 
Here is the place to buy time and labor and en- 
ergy and health and strength and honor, — all the 
things a man can sell, whether he ought or ought 
not. Here is the place to exploit mankind and 
traffic in all possible wares. The age being com- 
mercial, the city is the natural expression of the 
age. It is essentially a market, with living accom- 



HOLIDAYS 271 

modations for the bulk of the traders, very mag- 
nificent accommodations for the successful ones, 
very mean and shabby accommodations for the less 
successful ones. 

To turn one's back upon the city no longer means 
loss of protection, and I have been trying to show 
that it need not mean any sacrifice of the social 
instinct; but it does assuredly mean the giving 
up of commercial speculation, and the gambling 
spirit generally. You have to get people together 
in considerable numbers, and put a pressure on 
them, the pressure of necessity or desire, to get 
any great profit out of them. The city satisfies 
both of these conditions. It furnishes the crowd 
and it furnishes the pressure. There is the daily 
necessity for food and clothing and shelter, and 
there is the desire for pleasure and display. Pro- 
fit could ask no better harvest field. As long as 
profit, that is "business," is the main concern of 
the adult world, the city will hold its own and will 
grow larger and possibly even more hideous than 
at present. From our present point of view this 
business spirit is distinctly anti-social, since it goes 
in for money profit at any cost, and is not concerned 
with the real social purpose, the increase of human 
wealth. Just so far, then, as a city represents the 
apotheosis of this spirit, the worship of the golden 
calf, — and there are few cities which do not, — 
it must be looked upon as a hostile force, an anti- 
social thing, essentially opposed to the deepest pur- 
poses of those who care for excellence and beauty. 



272 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

This apparent digression in a chapter which has 
ostensibly to do with school holidays has been made 
unavoidable in coming at a practical treatment of 
the problem of getting the children into the coun- 
try. Every one, I think, must admit that it is 
highly desirable to get them into the country for at 
least four months in the year, that it is uneconomic 
to provide duplicate homes and service for such 
numbers, and finally that it is most undesirable to 
separate them from their parents. As I have 
already suggested, every argument makes the coun- 
try the better place the whole year round, and this 
becomes the only practical arrangement when it is 
realized that the exodus of the children must and 
should mean the exodus of the entire family. The 
carrying out of the social purpose involves the 
abandonment of the city as we now know it, and 
an extension of the idea of home to include both a 
house and a garden. Tremendous as such a pro- 
gramme is, education cannot avoid it. But when 
the idea once takes hold of a man, that the matters 
of supreme importance are health and beauty and 
accomplishment and goodness, the programme is as 
good as carried out, for the matter has become 
inevitable. Such a man will set about getting the 
best possible environment for his family and him- 
self, for it will become a religious duty to do it, 
much more binding than putting a dollar-bill on 
the collection plate or subscribing to formal arti- 
cles of belief which he neither knows nor under- 
stands. An enterprise, undertaken in this spirit, 



HOLIDAYS 273 

as a matter of prime importance, seldom fails of 
success. 

But meanwhile the children are in the city, the 
idea of human wealth has not penetrated into the 
consciousness of their parents, the summer heat is 
on, and there remains the temporary expedient of 
which we spoke, the adaptation of school buildings 
and school process to the conditions of the season. 
It is not necessary to build school buildings with 
flat tin roofs, thin walls, and sliding windows which 
open but half way. It is entirely possible to build 
the walls thick, to make the windows open all the 
way, to have the roof project several feet, to give 
it such a slope that there will be an adequate air 
chamber over the upper rooms, to surround the 
building with an open playground, and provide 
trees and vines and other cool greenery. Such a 
building will be far more comfortable and whole- 
some than the average dwelling, and not less suited 
to the requirements of winter. In the same way 
it is the merest common sense to adapt the chil- 
dren's dress to the heat. A clean, healthy boy, 
with only a neat woven suit and with sandals for 
street wear; a wholesome girl, with these and a 
simple cotton frock cut with low neck and short 
sleeves, need not suffer with the heat, and it would 
be a very conventional person indeed who found 
such simple dress unsuitable. The school process al- 
ready outlined for childhood and youth in the small 
organic schools will need very little modification to 
adapt it to summer. In the warmest weather, there 



274 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

will naturally be a selection of the quieter games 
and exercises, greater use of the swimming tank 
during school hours and as a part of the regular 
occupations, more frequent excursions to the park 
and to the country. In the high school, some of 
the intellectual work may give place to manual 
work. It would, in fact, take little skill to arrange 
a school programme that would be infinitely better 
than the present unofficial programme of a summer 
in the city, with its aimless, profitless waste of time. 
The children do not even have a good time, for 
laziness, let me repeat, is not a source of happiness. 
It becomes a habit and may then lead one to decline 
more active sources of happiness, but it does not 
provide a substitute. The long summer vacation 
for city children lacking adequate opportunities for 
games and wholesome occupations tends to promote 
laziness and other vicious habits, and has, I think, 
nothing to be said in its favor. Socially, it is a 
grave mistake, since it both wastes an opportunity 
and undoes some of the good work already done. 

I come now to those more fortunate children 
who are taken out of town for four or five months, 
and in the country, among the mountains, at the 
seashore, have an opportunity to taste the freedom 
and delight of Nature. For them the long sum- 
mer vacation is an immense benefit, provided, of 
course, the other conditions are wholesome, and 
especially the human comradeship. It is quite 
possible to reap an even richer harvest than from 
the regular school year itself. The simpler and 



HOLIDAYS 275 

more sturdy life, the fresh air and exercise, the 
chance to walk and run, ride and row, swim and 
climb, the contact with Nature, with plant and ani- 
mal, mineral and rock, sunshine and storm, — these 
are the great teachers of childhood, and when their 
lessons are learned in reverence and love, one is 
the richer for the rest of one's life. But it is to 
be remembered that into this full and marvelous 
world children do not come quite unaided, any 
more than the race came at a single generation. 
It is a world that must be opened to them, and 
necessarily by one who has himself entered it, and 
knows the main traveled roads and some of the 
by-paths. It is very good for children to find out 
as much as they can for themselves, but they must 
be put in the way of this knowledge, and must be 
stimulated and helped. And it is to be remem- 
bered that there come rainy days, and even long 
stretches on sunny days, when other occupations 
are to be provided, hand-work, reading, sketching, 
games with something better in them than a mere 
playing with chance. The wealth of the summer 
is potential. It must be made actual by sym- 
pathetic and intelligent comradeship. Without 
this, the long summer vacation may bring to the 
child in the country, as to the child in the city, 
actual deterioration. The ordinary summer hotel 
and boarding-house are the very last places for 
children, and even at one's own country place, 
stablemen and ignorant servants are the last com- 
panions for them. 



276 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

Some very noble people board, but the majority 
of those who board are not noble, and are not suit- 
able companions for a child. They have perma- 
nently or temporarily thrown over social responsi- 
bilities, and are out of touch with that more serious 
and more beautiful life which comes to flower only 
in a home. No one who has watched the treat- 
ment of children in hotels, the way they are trifled 
with, the alternate coaxing and bullying that they 
receive, the frivolous and self-conscious attitude to- 
wards life that is cultivated, can regard such an 
environment as commendable, or even permissible. 
The simplest cottage, a cabin even, or a tent, is 
much to be preferred, and may be made the instru- 
ment of greater good and happiness. 

A long chapter might be written about servants, 
but it would be sad reading. Taking the class as 
a whole, I believe it to be socially the least desir- 
able, the most unsound class that we have. And 
I believe this because it is of all our laboring 
classes the most deficient in democracy and self- 
respect. This is particularly true of the men. 
Many women believe themselves forced into do- 
mestic service because they have not been trained 
for something better, and, above all, they fall into 
it because they have not had the will and character 
to work out a sounder and less slavish scheme of 
life. But a man has greater opportunities, and, 
having these, is the more accountable. To be 
acceptable as a servant, he must have a certain 
amount of intelligence and address, a certain ap- 



HOLIDAYS 277 

pearance and physique. To be permanently suc- 
cessful, he must add to this, honesty and reasonable 
faithfulness. These qualities fit a man for some- 
thing better than being ordered around by other 
people, his superiors, perhaps, only in the matter 
of bank accounts. These qualities fit a man for 
something better than servility. Here in America 
they open the door to any number of self-respect- 
ing, independent occupations. When, in the face 
of these opportunities, a man elects to be a servant, 
and adds to it a willingness, even an eagerness, to 
exhaust ingenuity itself in quest of fees, it stamps 
him at once as a person of very unsound outlook 
on life, and a most unfit companion for boys and 
girls. 

It is worth remarking that, however deplorable 
our modern plutocracy, the moral burden of it 
rests upon both the rich and the poor ; the rich in 
enslaving their neighbors, the poor in being willing 
to be enslaved. The young man whose only ambi- 
tion is to be employed by some one else, provided 
with job and wages, invites the exploitation of his 
labor and the piling up of those tremendous for- 
tunes which he afterwards condemns in terms of 
bitter invective. The way out, here as elsewhere, 
is through the open door of a more democratic and 
self-respecting idea. 

Whether, then, the long summer vacation is an 
advantage even to the children who are spending it 
in the country depends upon how they are spend- 
ing it, and, above all, with whom. 



278 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

For out-and-out country children, particularly 
in the farming districts, the project of an all-year 
school meets with the opposition that the children 
are wanted in the harvest field and garden, wanted 
to drop corn, pick stones, pull weeds, make hay, 
fetch the cows, gather berries, wanted for a hun- 
dred and one smaller occupations, wanted some- 
times before they are quite old enough and strong 
enough for the tasks. The test of these demands 
is extremely simple. They are socially sound just 
so far as they offer the best possible occupations 
for children. They are socially unsound just so 
far as they substitute inferior occupations. All 
the occupations have the great merit of being 
genuine. The work is there and has to be done. 
The doing of it will be sincere and helpful, and 
this is the first condition of artistic work, the 
doing of something that will be a delight and ser- 
vice to somebody. It is much better than mak- 
ing things and then destroying them. Many of the 
occupations, also, are so little muscular that they 
may be safely undertaken by children and by boys 
and girls. It seems to me that this outdoor work 
may properly occupy a part of each summer day ; 
but to further the social purpose, that is, to be 
educational, it must satisfy precisely the same con- 
ditions as the school process. It must make for 
health, strong bodies, and good red blood, and 
therefore be varied and never exhausting. It 
must further the development of the senses, the 
sight and hearing and touch and taste and smell, 



HOLIDAYS ' 279 

and consequently be quantitative, and sufficiently- 
varied to bring the several organs into constant 
use. It must be plainly intelligent, so as to stimu- 
late the intellectual activity. Finally, and above 
all, it must be touched with wholesome emotion. 
The children must be interested in the work, must 
want to do it, must do it right gladly and merrily, 
in the company of gentle persons whom they love 
and who love them. If these conditions are ful- 
filled, then child labor is a splendid thing. If they 
are not fulfilled, child labor is anti-social and 
wrong. 

By insisting so strenuously that child labor in 
garden and field shall satisfy precisely the same 
conditions as the school process, the two are prac- 
tically identified, and this is what I meant that 
they should be. The school has simply been trans- 
ferred to the open, and holds its sessions each fair 
day of spring and summer and autumn in the 
most beautiful and best equipped of schoolhouses. 
Storm and cold alone drive the school indoors, 
and at times even storm and cold are braved in 
order to get the lesson out of them, and the tingle 
and excitement which come from meeting them. 
" Delight, joy, sympathetic interest in things, is 
the only reality," says the ever wise Goethe. " It 
alone calls forth what is real in ourselves. Every- 
thing else is vain and produces but vanity." 

But if holidays and work and school are simply 
the best possible spending of the days, — the most 
joyful, the most helpful, the most educational, — 



280 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

then they must be at heart one and the same thing. 
They must be the terms of a common purpose, the 
modes by which we realize the social good. This 
result miglit have seemed at first an absurdity, a 
paradox ; but now I hope it has been so far justi- 
fied that one may count it not only as a truth, but 
as the most profound and far-reaching truth in 
education. I have applied it in the educational 
process of childhood and youth. I mean in suc- 
ceeding chapters to carry it to the logical extreme, 
and apply it to the process of men and women in 
action, that is, to the concerns of adult life. 

The redemption of humanity is not a sudden 
act of conversion. It is a slow and constant pro- 
cess, the gradual unfolding and perfecting of the 
human spirit. But in every rational scheme of 
salvation the acceptable time is now. Why put off 
the holiday until Christmas, or Easter, or summer- 
time, even until to-morrow ? Why not make to-day 
a holiday, by importing into it a sympathetic inter- 
est in people and things, — sound emotion and 
sound activity? 



CHAPTER IX 

AT THE UNIVERSITY 

If the lower school cover the educational pro- 
cess of childhood, and the high school cover the 
process of youth, then the university must cover the 
process of manhood and womanhood. It must be 
simply a process for carrying out the social pur- 
pose in the adult world, and must have the same 
purpose as the schools, the increase of human 
wealth. It is in this spirit that I propose to con- 
sider the university, and to inquire what form it 
must take in order to satisfy the requirements of 
the social purpose, and be the fitting culmination 
of the formal educational process. 

Although the university is among the very old- 
est of our institutions of learning, — the University 
of Bologna recently celebrated its eight hundredth 
anniversary, — its precise place in our American 
system of education is not yet fixed. It is not yet 
articulated with the high school. The ideals inside 
the university are still in part conflicting. Per- 
haps its very age is responsible for this uncer- 
tainty. So many traditions have gathered around 
the university, it is so venerable and authoritative, 
that it does stand more or less for the ideals of the 



282 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

past, and the rising tide of democracy has not yet 
flooded its purposes. 

At heart, the university is aristocratic in that 
older sense which made excellence an exclusive 
quality and not a general possession, and it is there- 
fore much given to making distinctions. It has 
always been the process of the privileged few, an 
institution with distinct requirements and supposed 
rights. It is still such in the minds of many, and 
this belated ideal, for such I must regard it, stands 
confused and uncertain in the face of the newer, 
democratic forces. 

These forces, however, are steadily gaining 
ground. In England they have been showing 
themselves in that democratic impulse which has 
been making educational history under the name 
of university extension, and this impulse has had 
the distinction of originating in the universities 
themselves. In Germany the university is so far 
democratic that it is alike open to all classes, pro- 
vided they can bring a somewhat high order of 
intellectual equipment. In Switzerland, one finds 
still greater freedom, and more genuine democracj 7 , 
perhaps the widest open door in all the world of 
universities. 

Here in America, we have no one type of univer- 
sity. We have several quite distinct types. The 
older universities, with their eyes more steadily 
fixed upon the traditions of the past than upon 
the requirements of the present moment, are still 
touched with medievalism. The newer universi- 



AT THE UNIVERSITY 283 

ties, and especially those of the West, show more 
distinctly democratic tendencies. Some of them are 
still hampered by the personal whims and preju- 
dices of their founders, but time will probably 
remove these disabilities. Between these two ex- 
tremes, we have the greatest of our present Amer- 
ican universities, institutions like Harvard, which 
have the tremendous impetus of a glorious past 
and a firm hold upon the present. 

But not one of our representative universities 
has yet seized upon the full idea of democracy, 
that the university is the process of manhood and 
womanhood, and, as such, is open to everybody, 
and is called upon to serve all in the smaller or 
greater measure of their needs, rather than in the 
prescribed measure of its own elaborate require- 
ments. The thought has still to take root that the 
sole function of a university is to render social 
service, not the exclusive service which it is pleased 
to formulate, but that general human service which 
represents the carrying out of the social purpose. 
One may sum this all up in a word by saying 
that the universities need to be democratized. In 
England this need was recognized by the univer- 
sities themselves. In this country the need was 
pressed upon the universities from without. It 
cannot be said that the extension movement has 
taken any great hold in America. It was my own 
undeserved fortune to deliver the first extension 
lecture given in this country. It was on chemistry, 
and was given to St. Timothy's Workingmen's 



284 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

Guild in Koxborough, Philadelphia, in November, 
1890. The movement, therefore, is still quite 
young. I have watched it very carefully, and I 
have had high hopes of its usefulness, but each 
year has made it clearer that in America, at least, 
it is not a democratic movement. It has rendered 
genuine service, but among a class for whose im- 
provement other agencies already exist, that is to 
say, it has reached teachers, people of leisure, in- 
tellectual people, even people of fashion, rather 
than workingmen. It has become, in fact, a form 
of intellectual amusement, to be ranked with the 
German opera, and the symphony concert, and 
other agreeable pastimes, rather than as a form of 
serious intellectual work. I do not want to speak 
slightingly of any of these occupations, and I be- 
lieve there are people who make very serious work 
of them. I only want to point out that they are 
not activities at all parallel to genuine university 
work. The extension movement has had the great 
merit of attracting to our shores a series of bril- 
liant English lecturers, and of bringing out a 
number of talented lecturers from our own uni- 
versities. Some of our men have likewise gone 
to England, and this interchange of wisdom has 
done more to effect a genuine Anglo-American 
alliance than the more official movements at Wash- 
ington. 

The really effective impulse towards the exten- 
sion of adult education in this country has come 
from without the universities, and has shown itself 



AT THE UNIVERSITY 285 

in such movements as Chautauqua, and the peo- 
ple's colleges which have sprung up in various parts 
of the country, and especially in our tremendous 
schools of .correspondence, — some of them two 
hundred thousand strong ! — designed to meet the 
needs of people in quest of knowledge in out-of- 
the-way corners of the land. Now this outside 
impulse has been very genuine, and when you 
consider the difficulties to be overcome, it has been 
marvelously successful. In the face of this wealth 
of opportunity, one might be tempted to call 
hands off, and to declare that any man or woman 
in America, with the proper spirit, already has suf- 
ficient chances. But this negative attitude does not 
represent the conception of the social state. The 
social state entertains a much more positive con- 
ception than this. It is not satisfied to leave social 
betterment to chance. It would bring human 
wealth within reach, within easy reach, indeed 
(God knows heredity will make the taking of it 
hard enough), and even with gentle insistence 
would press it upon the sons and daughters of the 
state. 

It must not be thought that the universities 
have been apathetic in this matter of adult educa- 
tion. Much of the work just enumerated has been 
carried on, and carried on with devotion and glad- 
ness, by university men. Furthermore, the univer- 
sities have ministered most nobly to the same adult 
needs in the summer schools, which a number of 
them have established, and which represent an 



286 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

openness of opportunity quite in excess of anything 
offered in the regular courses. 

We see, then, on the one side, a multitude of 
men and women genuinely desirous of further and 
higher education, and on the other side a number 
of universities genuinely desirous of spreading the 
higher education abroad, but hampered by their 
own traditions and a sense of their own righteous 
requirements. And meanwhile we see the multi- 
tude turning to those outside agencies of culture, 
agencies which lack the personnel and equipment 
of the great universities, but which are available, 
and, to a certain extent, effective. 

Even within the universities one finds uncer- 
tainty in regard to their proper function. There 
has been a notable growth of the university spirit 
within the past decade, but there are still institu- 
tions which do not seem to know whether they are 
colleges or universities. 

The traditional American college occupies, per- 
haps, the most uncertain position of all. The old 
four-year course of undergraduate study is being 
seriously entrenched upon by the advanced work 
done in the best high schools, and young people of 
twenty are asking increasingly for the freedom of 
study and choice of subject involved in the uni- 
versity idea. It seems to me that the manifest 
destiny of the typical college, with its prescribed 
studies and narrower ideals of service, is either to 
disappear entirely, or to emerge into the greater 
freedom and election of the university. This latter 



AT THE UNIVERSITY 287 

is the condition of affairs which represents the 
largest measure of practical simplicity. It prevails 
in Switzerland, and, with certain undemocratic 
restrictions, in Germany. In both countries the 
native students pass through the lower school and 
the Gymnasium, representing a combined process 
of nine years, and, on graduation, may enter any 
Swiss or German university without further exam- 
ination. In the Gymnasium, the students receive 
a good general education along certain lines, an 
effective training in language and mathematics, 
somewhat less effective in science, and almost no- 
thing in the way of manual training and gymnastic. 
At the university, the studies are elective, the 
attendance is voluntary, the degree is given for 
actual work done, — an acceptable thesis showing 
the power of original investigation in one's major 
study, an examination in that and in two minor re- 
lated studies. In many of the German universities 
there is a prescribed residence, but in Switzerland 
there is in this, as in everything else, the utmost 
freedom. One remains for as long or as short a 
period as one will, several years or several weeks ; 
the degree is given for qualification, not for any 
amount of mechanical compliance. The Swiss 
universities are quite consistent with the political 
ideal of the nation. They are open to men and 
women alike, open, indeed, to everybody who cares 
to use them, and the use may be very partial or 
very complete. There are no entrance examina- 
tions, no prescribed studies, no time requirement. 



288 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

They are thoroughly democratic. One who has 
tasted this open freedom, and has experienced the 
delight of working purely for the work's sake, 
finds the walls and hedges built around American 
education sadly irksome. 

In England, which is one of the most democratic 
countries in the world, the universities are curiously 
undemocratic. They are still the institutions of 
privilege and separation. 

In such a time of transition as the present, it 
is particularly pertinent to inquire what direction 
the American university is to take, if it is to be 
an operation of that complete and lifelong culture 
which comes from applying the philosophic idea to 
the practical details of daily life. In reality, the 
inquiry is very simple, just as soon as one comes to 
look at the university in this light ; not as a dis- 
tinct institution, but merely as a part of that edu- 
cational process which covers the whole of life and 
has for its sole function the realizing of the social 
purpose. For practical convenience, the university 
sums up that part of the process which has to do 
with men and women. Like the process of child- 
hood and the process of youth, the university must 
get itself realized in the present moment, and 
similar to them in spirit, it must take men and 
women as it finds them, — not selected, favored 
men and women, but men and women as they are, 
— and must carry out the social purpose in them, 
the creating of organic human wealth, the bringing 
about of human accomplishment and beauty and 
power. 



AT THE UNIVERSITY 289 

The one requirement that the process of the 
university must be contemporary simplifies matters 
quite as thoroughly as the similar requirement 
simplified them in the high school and the lower 
school. Here are men and women to be led into a 
larger emotional and intellectual and bodily life, 
into the better kingdom of the more perfect life. 
It is a present need. And the university is the 
social process for helping on this growth. It is a 
present opportunity. No condition may properly 
interpose itself between the two. As a contem- 
porary process, the university may not send long 
fingers into the past in the way of entrance exam- 
inations. It must dispense with these altogether. 
In doing this, the university is not only fulfilling 
its own function, but it is once for all freeing the 
high school from external pressure just as the 
abolition of entrance examinations in the high 
school freed the lower schools from external pres- 
sure. It declares the open door all along the line. 
When you have done this, you have made the 
idealizing of secondary education possible. As the 
agent of a larger purpose, the university must re- 
strict its process to the present moment, and must 
not, by its requirements, fetter the earlier processes 
of education. Where these processes have been 
well carried out, the young people have had the 
best possible preparation for the university. Where 
these processes have not been well carried out, it 5 s 
a pity, but this does not absolve the university 
from its own special function. As a social process, 



290 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

the university may not decline the work proper to 
it, simply because there has been failure or only 
partial success further back along the line. There 
is indeed the greater reason why the university 
should be the more urgent and the more pains- 
taking in its own ministrations. It is surely a 
thoroughly bad policy, socially speaking, to still 
further neglect those who have been already neg- 
lected. But this is practically what the universi- 
ties have been doing, and this is the reason that 
Chautauqua and university extension and the peo- 
ple's colleges, and the schools of correspondence 
and the summer schools and all that we may call 
the extra-official machinery of education, have 
sprung up so abundantly and have met so large a 
popular need. 

This doing away of entrance examinations would 
be a great benefit to the university itself. It is far 
more wholesome for the university teachers to put 
their whole energy into artistic work, into the work 
of presenting their subjects just as clearly and just 
as well as they possibly can. It has been said that 
we have the best teaching in the kindergarten and 
the worst in the universities. This has, of course, 
much of that exaggeration to be found in most 
picturesque statements, but there is at least a grain 
of truth in it. The university teacher is charac- 
terized by a knowledge of his subject rather than 
by his art in presenting it. If the amount of en- 
ergy which now goes into keeping students out of 
the university could be turned to account in help- 



AT THE UNIVERSITY 291 

ing them after they get in, the cause of culture 
would be considerably furthered. The art of the 
university teacher does not end with presentation. 
In addition, he has an immense field in the way of 
helping individual students, explaining, illustrating, 
simplifying, and a still more important field in the 
matter of strengthening the inner impulse, the 
motive power of the student life. This triple task 
is quite enough, and it is one into which a sturdy, 
red-blooded man could throw his whole heart. The 
task is one of social service, and it has about it the 
joy and refreshment which come from rendering 
social service. It is, in a word, a worthy and sig- 
nificant task. 

Furthermore, this doing away of the entrance 
examinations has, from the point of view of the 
university, the added merit of disposing once for 
all of that apparently endless task, the task of 
making the entrance requirements uniform. The 
conventions which have been held, the beautiful 
holidays which have been used up, the brain mat- 
ter which has been exhausted, in trying to recon- 
cile the conflicting requirements of our American 
universities, represent an appalling waste of time 
and energy. To restrict the university to the 
present moment is to unlock all these doors, and to 
make them uniform in making them all wide open. 

As the process of a social purpose which is 
democratic, the university may not select its ma- 
terial, may not exclude men and women on any 
pretense. The greater their necessity, the greater 



292 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

the university opportunity. The very name of the 
university has this all-comprehensiveness. Just as 
it is a place to gather all knowledge, so is it a 
place to gather all adult seekers after knowledge, 
— it is a process of the whole. We people who 
ask of the university this universality of purpose, 
we people who believe in the university as the last 
term in our scheme of formal education, believe in 
it as the inclusive process of manhood and woman- 
hood, do not for one moment ask this universality 
as a favor. We ask it that the university itself 
may fulfill its high function, may escape the nar- 
rowness and provincialism which now cling about it 
and about some of its teachers, and may come once 
for all into the democratic open. 

This, it seems to me, would represent a glorious 
ideal, an institution standing in our midst as the 
upholder of the best truth we know, and ready to 
give this truth in small or large measure to the 
least and to the greatest. 

The present attitude of the universities is exclu- 
sive, and, quite without intention, even unfriendly. 
They are looked upon by the masses with a touch 
of suspicion. If the universities could be the 
centre of our national aspiration towards perfec- 
tion, could be the efficient helper of our working- 
men and workingwomen, there would come to the 
universities that strength and power which come 
to every man and every institution made by reason 
of appreciated service the centre of popular devo- 
tion and interest. And this larger role the univer- 



AT THE UNIVERSITY 293 

sities have it in their power to play if they will but 
open their doors to all men and women, and will 
give the same welcome to the hard-pressed student 
worker who can afford time for but one course, that 
they now extend only to those who take many 
courses and ostensibly give their whole time to it. 

And now let us change the point of view to that 
of the men and women who would go to the uni- 
versity. If these men and women have gone 
through the lower school such as we have pictured 
it, and the high school, they are already young 
people of power, and well grounded in the elements 
of language and mathematics and science. They 
have, moreover, strong and beautiful bodies, well- 
trained senses, developed brain matter, alert spirits. 
In age, they will be from nineteen to twenty years, 
quite old enough to undertake the advanced work 
of a modern three-year university, and to do it in 
a properly mature way. They represent, in fact, 
excellent human material for the university pro- 
cess. 

This state of wholesome preparation will be 
increasingly the normal situation. As the lower 
school is recognized as the educational process of 
all childhood, and the high school as the educa- 
tional process of all youth, the social purpose will 
be carried out in this inclusive fashion, and will 
not be content to leave so many of its children to 
be provided for later by the more expensive and 
infinitely less satisfactory process of the poorhouse 
and the asylum and the penitentiary. There is but 



294 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

one way to cure social deficiency, — it is to stop 
the supply. 

But there will always be some exceptions ; and 
to-day, as a result of our individualistic adminis- 
tration of the national resources, a very bad admin- 
istration in my own way of looking at it, the ex- 
ceptions far outnumber the rule. At the present 
moment there is no adequate provision by which 
this multitude of irregulars can have the advantage 
of the university. They are not prepared to take 
the entrance examinations, and there is no place 
where they can prepare. They can take a private 
tutor, but this is expensive and in general most 
unsatisfactory. They cannot go to the high schools, 
for they are out of line, even for those institutions. 
Even if they could go to the high schools, it would 
be a poor solution of the problem. Men and wo- 
men do not care to study in the same classes with 
boys and girls, for they have a different mental 
habit and a different rate of speed ; and then, too, 
there is a sensitiveness on the part of these older 
people which, however unreasonable it may seem in 
the abstract, is nevertheless a genuine obstacle. 

All these circumstances, under our present edu- 
cational regime, combine to withhold education from 
the great majority of those who have missed its 
early advantages ; and since this missing of early 
advantages is usually the misfortune rather than 
the fault of our multitudinous irregulars, we are, 
it seems to me, treating their aspirations with man- 
ifest harshness and injustice. We are throwing 



AT THE UNIVERSITY 295 

them over to a blind fate instead of making intelli- 
gent provision for them ; allowing, as in the case 
of the long summer holiday for the children who 
cannot go out of town, allowing the social purpose 
to come quite to a standstill ; only in this case it is 
for the entire year instead of for several months. 
I cannot feel that this is a causational, practical 
way of dealing with the social problem. It seems 
to me that the only way we can deal with the 
problem successfully is to make the university 
the process of democracy, the social process for the 
betterment of all men and women. And this 
necessitates the open door. 

Let us look a little more closely and see just 
what this open door of opportunity would mean. 

I can readily imagine that there are many good 
and earnest people who will be quite shocked at 
the bare proposition to do away with entrance ex- 
aminations at the university, and who will regard 
such a departure as ushering in another dark age. 
But this whole scheme of organic social education, 
as I have been emphasizing with perhaps tiresome 
insistence, is admirable, is indeed moral, only so 
far as it is practical ; and as a part of this scheme 
the open door of the university must submit to the 
same test. 

The whole idea of a university is to offer oppor- 
tunity for study in all departments of human in- 
quiry, in philosophy, language, history, mathemat- 
ics, science, art, law, medicine, and theology. It is 
a tremendous idea, but one that our great univer- 



296 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

sities come pretty near to realizing. Now my point 
is that to offer this opportunity well is the sole func- 
tion of the university, and that to use it well is the 
sole function of the student. Neither member of 
the joint alliance may properly interfere with the 
function of the other. The responsibility of artis- 
tic, effective presentation rests with the university. 
The responsibility of sound scholarship rests with 
the student. It is not necessary to build walls and 
to dig ditches about the courses of study. They 
are attractive only to those who have some taste in 
that direction and some power of assimilation. It 
is of so great importance to no one as to the stu- 
dent himself that he shall only undertake work 
for which he has adequate preparation, and in 
which there is reasonable hope of success. This is 
quite worth remembering. It is not necessary to 
make laws against swimming the Hudson until one 
has passed a searching examination in the natato- 
rium. Suppose, for example, that all the courses 
in mathematics were thrown open to the public, the 
courses in geometry, algebra, arithmetic, trigono- 
metry, analytics, calculus, differential equations, 
quaternions, and the rest. The public has never 
shown an undue greediness for mathematics. It 
is altogether improbable that any student would 
enter the course in calculus, pay the fee if there be 
one, and day after day attend the lesson, unless he 
had done sufficient preliminary work to make the 
course intelligible and to give him some hope of 
success. It is not necessary at the library to lock 



AT THE UNIVERSITY 297 

up La Place's " Mecanique Celeste " or Clerk Max- 
well's " Electricity." And it is the same all along 
the line. It is not at all probable that any young 
man or young woman would enter second-year 
French or second-year German if they had not 
done the first-year work. People are not so anx- 
ious to be bored. And the responsibility for prac- 
tical, effective action is one of the most important 
lessons which school and university have to teach. 
It can be taught only as an art, by putting this in- 
creasing responsibility on the students themselves. 
To open the door of the university would be a 
much easier and simpler matter than we are prone 
to imagine. It could be done successfully to-mor- 
row. The only change in the curriculum that 
we should have to make would be to see that all 
departments of study offered initial as well as 
advanced work. By numbering the courses con- 
secutively, it would be very easy to indicate to the 
outside world what the university regarded as the 
proper or necessary sequence. I have found, my- 
self, as a matter of practical experience, that stu- 
dents are far more anxious to be wisely guided in 
their work than we can possibly be to so guide 
them. Furthermore, an explicit statement in the 
catalogue, at the beginning of each department of 
study, could be offered by way of suggestion as to 
necessary or advisable sequence, alternative, or 
combination. A boy who wants to be an excellent 
physician, and who reads on such authority that 
his best plan is to take the courses in biology first, 



298 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

and to pass from that department to medicine, will 
be delighted to receive the suggestion and to carry- 
it out. The initial courses may be made parallel 
to the high-school courses in the same branch, so 
that regularly prepared students will not duplicate 
their work, while at the same time if any one course 
at the high school, through illness, or inaptitude, or 
even inattention, has not been met successfully, the 
gap may here be made good. Those who are quite 
unprepared may set to work at once to remove their 
disabilities. 

Now this plan is not very revolutionary, is not 
indeed at all revolutionary. Already the universi- 
ties offer initial work in all unusual departments 
of study, such as Hebrew or Sanskrit, and even in 
modern languages and in science. It would require 
a very slight extension of the curriculum to make it 
possible for any one, man or woman, young or old, 
full student or partial student, to go to a univer- 
sity and begin work in any department of study, 
and to carry it just as far as individual need might 
require. And this universality of purpose and 
process and service, I conceive to be the true func- 
tion of the university. Nothing less than this is 
the realization of our superb social purpose, the 
making the best that is possible out of every single 
individual. 

At the present moment, the operation of going 
to college is a somewhat elaborate operation, so 
elaborate that numbers of unsophisticated persons 
are quite deterred from at all making the attempt. 



AT THE UNIVERSITY 299 

It means the ordeal of an examination now so 
comprehensive that it is commonly divided into 
two parts and separated by an interval of a year. 
It means, in most cases, the going away from 
home, and the remaining for four years at an ex- 
pense of several hundred dollars a year. It means, 
in many cases, the relinquishment of home duties 
and opportunities of service which ought not to 
be relinquished. These requirements are some- 
what appalling to all, and to many they are simply 
impossible. 

A small boy, a friend of mine, who had been 
listening very attentively to an enumeration of the 
Harvard requirements, said with a sigh, " Dear 
me, I wish I were growing littler instead of big- 
ger." 

To make the university, then, the educational pro- 
cess of manhood and womanhood in any complete 
sense would require a greater number of small in- 
stitutions near the homes of the people ; would 
require an absolutely open door; would require 
perfect liberty to take one or several courses as 
circumstances made it possible and wise. 

These are not difficult or unreasonable require- 
ments, nor need they interfere with the granting 
of degrees, should that bit of formalism continue 
to be prized. It is a very simple matter to label 
a student bachelor or master or doctor when he 
has successfully taken a given number of courses, 
and this is indeed the growing custom at the pre- 
sent time. There is a marked tendency to limit the 



300 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

time requirement for the bachelor's degree to three 
years, or eighteen full courses, and to make one 
degree, the bachelor of arts, stand for this amount 
of mental discipline, quite regardless of the sub- 
jects through which it has been gained. The 
initial courses suggested in language and mathe- 
matics, such as are parallel with high-school work, 
need not count towards the degree, and there need 
be no lowering of the present standard. But it is 
even simpler to omit the label altogether, and cer- 
tify in some official way just what work has been 
accomplished. We all know so many unwise per- 
sons who are doctors of philosophy and so many 
wise ones who are not that the value of degrees 
does become increasingly casual. They are at 
best only a shorthand way of certifying that one 
has submitted to regular intellectual discipline, 
and the more specific record would really tell a 
story more to the point. Furthermore, when the 
university becomes the social process of all man- 
hood and womanhood, its ministration will be 
taken for granted, and there will be as little occa- 
sion for boasting of the fact as there is occasion 
at present for an ordinarily well-conditioned citi- 
zen to mention that he has had three meals or his 
daily bath or has been telling the truth. And I 
cannot help thinking that the best way of proclaim- 
ing that one is wise is to put it, not on sheepskin, 
but into convincing daily action. 

In the beautiful city of Zurich, in Switzerland, 
there is an old and famous university which offers 



AT THE UNIVERSITY 301 

almost the freedom that I have been outlining. 
It was my own good fortune to study there. The 
hours were long, but they were voluntary. There 
was no sense of rush. There was practically the 
leisure to grow wise. The laboratories were open 
from eight until twelve, and again from two until 
six. You came and went at your own convenience. 
The professor was at hand, and his assistants. 
The artisans were in the workshop and ready to 
serve. All of the conditions for work were made 
as complete and favorable as possible. The lec- 
tures were in progress at all hours; in summer, as 
early as from six to seven in the morning, and in 
winter, as late as from six to seven in the even- 
ing. At the beginning of each semester and for 
two weeks, all courses were open. The student 
was free to attend as many courses as he cared to, 
and judge whether they were meant for him or 
not. And each professor and lecturer was in duty 
bound to publish on these opening days the ground 
he intended to cover, and to indicate his method 
of treatment. At the end of the two weeks, the 
students were expected to know what courses they 
wished to take, and to enter upon them and pay 
the required fees. The fees were very small, 
amounting in the case of lecture courses to only 
five francs — one dollar — per semester for each 
hour of lecture a week. Thus, a lecture every 
day, six a week, would cost but six dollars for the 
whole semester, or twelve dollars for the academic 
year. The student was not obliged to continue 



302 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

a course already begun. If he had made a mis- 
take, or if the lecturer proved dull and unhelpful, 
the student was at perfect liberty to drop out and 
use his time to better advantage elsewhere. By 
dividing the year into semesters, the student had 
two opportunities of beginning new work, in Oc- 
tober and in March. 

The students were gathered from all corners of 
the earth, men and women, young and old. One 
class of ten students, I remember, represented 
seven different nationalities. They studied differ- 
ent things, at different rates, for different pur- 
poses. The work was self-prompted, and in the 
main, singularly earnest, for each student was re- 
sponsible to a very exacting and very well-informed 
taskmaster, that is to say, to himself. 

It was an inspiration to have an old gentleman 
with gray hair and time-chiseled face sit next to 
you in the course in geology, tramp with you in the 
Black Forest or among the lower Alps, enriching 
his older life at the same fountains where you were 
enriching your younger one. He took no other 
work at the university, but that was his concern, 
not the university's. The university served him to 
the extent of this one course, served him well, and 
he profited by it, — that was enough. And it was 
serious work, not an exposition of the entire sci- 
ence in ten lectures, but the same serious work 
offered to the candidates for the doctor's degree. 
It seemed to me that this old gentleman, with his 
fine, earnest face and historic name, was like a liv- 



AT THE UNIVERSITY 303 

ing benediction, silently proclaiming to the younger 
men and women the eternal value of the best 
knowledge. 

And so you might go on as you would, take as 
much as you would, or as little as you would, go as 
fast as you would, or as slow as you would. It was 
the function of the university to present know- 
ledge. It was yours to select and assimilate. When 
it came to giving the degree, the requirements were 
specific, but perfectly reasonable. You selected 
your major study, your Hauj^tfach, — in my own 
case, geology, — and quite in your own way and at 
your own convenience, you worked out some ori- 
ginal problem, some problem of Alpine geology, or 
whatever might suit your fancy and be possible at 
that season and in that locality. When this Arbeit 
was completed, you presented it to the head pro- 
fessor of the department, and if acceptable to him 
and to his confrere in mineralogy, you were allowed 
to come up for examination. But you were quite 
sure beforehand that the Arbeit would be accept- 
able, for you had gone over it in the rough with 
the friendly professor himself, sitting on the gallery 
of his little chalet up on the Ziirichberg, while the 
professor's little daughter brought you fresh moun- 
tain strawberries still wet with dew. Then came 
the examinations. The most important one was 
on the major subject, a monograph on some topic 
selected by yourself from a list of several. You 
were locked in a little room, with an unlimited 
quantity of paper and pens and ink and the limited 



304 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

quantity of your own knowledge. You were free 
to write as much and as long as you would, — the 
janitor brought you food. Then you went home 
and waited, a little nervously, perhaps, until the 
postman brought you word that you might go 
ahead with the oral examinations. These were 
three in number : the major subject, geology, let us 
say ; the obligatory minor, in this case mineralogy ; 
and in any second minor you might select, such 
as experimental physics or chemistry. These oral 
examinations were open to the public. Each one 
lasted for thirty minutes, and during that time the 
professor in charge was free to ask any question 
he would. And yet it was far from being an 
unpleasant ordeal. The professors were friendly 
men, and their questions were carefully graded, 
the difficulty being made less as you passed from 
your major down to your second minor. When it 
is all over, and the dean holds out his hand and 
says, " Herr doctor, I congratulate you," you are a 
little bit relieved, but the red tape has always been 
at a minimum. 

The Arbeit and the monograph may be in any of 
the great languages of Europe, and even the oral 
examinations are in your native tongue, in case the 
examining professor is able to manage it. If not, 
it is in German, but the professor says reassur- 
ingly, "It is the idea we want. If you cannot 
think of the German word, use the Latin or the 
French. It is the same to us, if you have the 
idea." And the degree means, not at all that you 



AT THE UNIVERSITY 305 

are a wise man, but simply that you have shown 
yourself able to do original work in your own de- 
partment, and are equipped at least with the tools 
of the intellectual workman. 

This Swiss method, with very little adaptation, 
may well serve as a model for that freer university 
which is to be the last term in the formal process 
for carrying out the social purpose. It is a psycho- 
logical method, as well as democratic. Notice that 
it is a process for carrying out the inner impulse 
of men and women ; that it is founded upon the 
principle of self -activity quite as thoroughly as is 
the kindergarten ; that it not only allows, but com- 
pels, choice ; and finally, that it is resolutely a 
process of the present moment. 

When we come to make specific our conception 
of the American university, we are forced to deal 
with the same practical details of daily life as when 
we considered the process of youth and of child- 
hood. To fulfill its office as the agent of the social 
purpose, the university must stand for the better- 
ment and development of the adult world, and so 
the name represents in truth not so much an insti- 
tution as a national process. Viewed in this light, 
the operations of the university become necessary 
rather than optional in their character, wrapped up 
in the philosophic idea quite as completely as all 
other phases of life and education are wrapped 
up in the one comprehensive idea. To believe this 
is to see that the university doors must stand wide 
open to all comers, that its methods must be built 



306 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

upon the emotional life of its students and teach- 
ers, upon their desires and affections, and that its 
operation must be the causational one along the 
path of the accomplished organism. 

Our boys and girls are now nineteen, and stand 
on the threshold of manhood and womanhood. 
The university must mean to them increased free- 
dom and increased opportunity, but it must be a 
process of the twenty-four hours and of the twelve 
months. The good health and organic power built 
up with so much care in the lower school and in 
the high school must not be squandered at the uni- 
versity. Rather must this wealth be conserved and 
heightened. The university, like the schools, is a 
culture process, and it is the present moment which 
is to be enriched. No possible future good may 
obscure this fundamental requirement. The flood 
of personal, human, good fortune is a rising flood, 
and may know no ebbing. 

Our lad of nineteen, or our maiden, must waken 
to each glad new day with the same fresh enthusi- 
asm which greeted the days of childhood and youth, 
must waken, if possible, in the same simple, beau- 
tiful home, and in the midst of the same sincere, 
sympathetic home life. If family circumstances 
permit the lad to give his entire time to the uni- 
versity, he may well complete his course in three 
years without pressure, without worry, and without 
loss of health. And this would be especially the 
case if the course, instead of being six or seven 
months long, should cover ten or eleven months. 



AT THE UNIVERSITY 307 

Long hours are no disadvantage, provided they are 
wholesomely spent. Our lad may well go to the 
university from nine, or even from eight o'clock in 
the morning until twelve, and again from two 
until six, provided he have Sunday and one, or 
possibly two, afternoons a week off for other ex- 
periences, and have his evenings free for family 
and social life, for music, conversation, games, 
reading. And this can be perfectly well arranged. 
No student ought to take more than six courses, 
of which at least two may profitably be laboratory 
courses. If we suppose six mornings of four hours 
to be at our disposal, we can readily cover the four 
lecture courses in the mornings, not one hour each 
day, but two hours three times a week. This would 
permit a lecture and a succeeding seminar, or a 
succeeding study period, and if well used, would 
be amply sufficient without home work. By hav- 
ing only two subjects during the morning, and pre- 
ferably two related subjects, the attention is not 
dissipated, and one may do ample justice to the 
studies without undue fatigue. Furthermore, each 
lecture should contain a distinct thought by way of 
nucleus, a thought which may be anticipated at the 
close of the preceding lecture, and reiterated at 
the beginning of the succeeding one. In this way 
each salient point would receive mention three 
times, first as a preliminary statement, then as a 
full and extended exposition, and finally as a brief 
summary. The discussion between student and 
professor, personal explanation, parallel reading, 



308 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

and the following out of interesting by-paths may 
well occupy the succeeding hour. But my special 
point is that the work should be done at the uni- 
versity, in properly equipped rooms, with proper 
guidance and assistance, that the attention should 
be concentrated on one or two subjects and on one 
point within the subject, and that the time outside 
of the university should be absolutely free. 

One matter in which all industrial reformers are 
very keen is that individual work shall be done in 
the establishment itself under hygienic conditions, 
and shall not be farmed out to home contractors, 
for it is the latter practice which has given rise to 
the "sweat shop," with all of its tragic sorrows. 
No firm is admitted to the " white list " of the city 
if its wares are the product of this inhuman sweat- 
ing. The application is obvious. 

If the laboratory work be confined to the after- 
noons and we have four afternoons at our disposal, 
of four hours each, we may have two laboratory 
courses well given, for each course would have 
eight hours. The time may be divided into four 
two-hour periods or into two four-hour periods, as 
circumstances make the more advisable. Or, if 
two three-hour periods suffice, and they would in 
most branches, the extra hour may well be given 
to the gymnasium and the swimming tank. In 
any case, there must be the most ample provision 
for good health. If the gymnasium cannot be 
compassed during the afternoon, it must come sev- 
eral times a week during the evening. Further- 



AT THE UNIVERSITY 309 

more, a large part of Sunday, of the two free 
afternoons, and even a fair slice of each noon in- 
termission ought to be spent in the open in good, 
vigorous, sociable exercise. 

It is held by many persons whose opinion is 
entitled to all respect, that one great advantage of 
our present system of large and distant colleges is 
the sending a boy away from home, throwing him 
on his own resources, making a man of him. This 
is perfectly true if the home be an unwise one. 
But there is nothing in all the length and breadth 
of the land that is the equivalent of a wise home ; 
for it is the home which is the social unit ; it is 
the home whose perfecting means the fulfillment of 
the social purpose ; it is in the home that the race 
life and the individual life are to be purified and 
redeemed. 

To send a boy out of a wise home into the care- 
less life of a college dormitory or students' boarding- 
house is a singular piece of infatuation. To sud- 
denly absolve him from all home duties is to make 
the lad selfish; to cut him adrift from care and 
sympathy is to expose him unduly to temptation ; 
to starve his emotional life is to lessen the whole- 
some power of sentiment. In the wise home, our 
lad has always had freedom ; his life has been the 
expression of his own inner impulse, and it has 
been carried out through his own self-activity. He 
has been shielded from evil on the same hygienic 
principle that he has been shielded from sewer gas 
and malaria, because diphtheria and chills and 



310 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

fever are not good for him. And as to making a 
man of him, as the phrase commonly goes, it means 
rubbing off the bloom, making him something less 
sweet and clean than he need to have been. The 
staunchest trees, the oaks and elms and cedars, 
grow slowly and live long. As we want our lad 
to make the fullest measure of a man, it were well 
not to press his manhood, but to let it come nat- 
urally and joyously as the full summer follows on 
the springtime. At nineteen, if he has had wise 
teachers and parents, he does not have to learn 
the essential things of life, the working of his own 
body, the prompting of sex, the changes which dif- 
ferentiate manhood from boyhood, and especially 
he does not have to learn all this through the min- 
istration of evil and vulgarity. He has learned it 
from purer and better sources. 

There comes eventually a time when our young 
collegian will profitably go away from home, not 
to exploit the problem of good and evil by the 
crudest sort of experimenting, but rather to in- 
crease his knowledge and experience of the good. 
In more evolved times each community will have its 
university just as it now has its high school. But 
these smaller universities cannot each offer all the 
branches of human knowledge. They may each 
offer the more fundamental branches, and leave 
special lines of inquiry to larger and more central 
institutions, or else each smaller university may 
offer the fundamentals and one or more specialties. 
I like the latter plan the better, as insuring the 



AT THE UNIVERSITY 311 

greater vitality. In either case, there would be a 
natural and wholesome movement of older students 
from place to place, pursuing the more advanced 
work of the latter part of their course wherever 
they could do it to the best advantage. This in- 
terchange could be accomplished with the greatest 
simplicity and democracy, it seems to me, if, in 
place of dormitories and boarding-houses, the stu- 
dent went from his own home into some other home, 
made partly vacant by the temporary absence of a 
student, — son or daughter, — or made additionally 
hospitable by the growth of the social and university 
spirit. This arrangement might be the occasion 
of much good on both sides, and it would have the 
great practical advantage of robbing the peripa- 
tetic philosophers of any additional expense. 

It is highly important that the university should 
take up the work of education where the high school 
drops it, but it is equally important that the univer- 
sity should also minister to the intellectual needs 
of that larger part of the community which may 
not give all its time to the formal process, — the 
son who is the necessary support of his family, the 
daughter who must devote a large part of her time 
to an invalid mother, the father who is busy with 
the bread-and-butter problem, the mother who has 
pressing home duties. At present we make no 
adequate provision for these needs. Yet we could 
meet them very readily if we held that broader 
conception of the function of the university. A 
local university with its doors open to all comers, 



312 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

to the follower of one course quite as cordially as 
to the follower of six, could be an immense force 
for good in our community, saving spinsters and 
other less occupied persons from the inanities of 
afternoon teas and card-playing, and making cul- 
ture a vital, ever-available thing. A lecture course 
requiring six hours per week, or a laboratory course 
requiring eight, would be possible in many a busy 
life; and in many a frivolous life might be the 
beginning of better things. When we become a 
moral and esthetic people, we shall have done with 
illness and invalidism, but the day is still distant. 
Meanwhile, we have in our midst many young 
persons of deficient strength, who cannot take six 
courses a year under any conditions whatsoever, 
but who could with great benefit take two or three 
courses. These are matters worthy of our very 
grave consideration. 

It is not an idle dream, this thought that we 
might have in every community a university with 
the outstretched hand of intellectual comradeship 
for every man and woman : it is a very practical 
possibility. To carry out the plan we have only 
to desire it. Here, as elsewhere, the obstacles are 
mental. But already we have sufficient good-will 
in the community to realize the plan, if this good- 
will could be concentrated upon such an ideal and 
turned to its practical realization. And there is 
sufficient spirit-hunger on the part of the people 
to make this democratizing of the university a 
reality of service. It is a pleasant picture to fancy 



AT THE UNIVERSITY 313 

every considerable town with its university just as 
it now has its high school, — a university represent- 
ing the formal side of the educational process of 
manhood and womanhood ; to fancy that every one 
could go there and receive the best instruction in 
the best things, could get just in proportion to 
his time and ability and desire. It is thrilling 
to feel even in imagination the warm community 
of interest which would spring out of this intellec- 
tual comradeship, to see the gray-haired men and 
elderly women, keeping alive and young the best 
part of human life, the alert spirit, and growing 
old only in the best sense, in experience and in 
wisdom ; to see the young men and maidens doing 
their part in the family life, and still getting the 
best that the higher education can give. It is a 
pleasant picture to fancy that the daily life of toil 
might go on for each one of us touched always with 
the emotion of intellectual wonder and the sense 
of intellectual growth. And this, the open univer- 
sity would make possible. 

The needs of the simple life can be satisfied with 
much less than a whole day's labor of productive 
toil, but the leisure saved is valuable only as it can 
be put to some noble use. 

In all of our schemes for ideal living we fail to 
be practical, and therefore fail to be moral, if we 
forget that a certain amount of genuine toil is both 
necessary and desirable. The present hideousness 
of toil comes from the fact that it is misdirected 
and misdistributed. We are forever doing use- 



314 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

less, meaningless things in place of the wholesome, 
beautiful tasks of the simple life. We are forever 
letting some go scot free, to their own hurt, and 
binding dreadful burdens upon others, even to the 
losing of their souls. We are drinking the same 
poison which proved fatal to Greece, and to every 
other nation which once was and now is not, the 
poison of an unconcern for our brother's good. It 
is a poison which will be equally fatal for America. 
But the cup grows less alluring as we get the full 
taste of it. Some time, perhaps, it will be reso- 
lutely dashed to the ground. 

In looking at the beautiful life of our present 
universities, at its opportunity, its serenity, its 
spirit of high adventure, one cannot shut one's 
eyes to the fact that for this beautiful life there is 
a price, the price of less opportunity, less serenity, 
less high adventure on the part of a multitude of 
workers. It is the excess of their intemperate toil 
which makes the universities possible. We should 
be democratizing the universities to very little pur- 
pose if we did not provide, as well as the open 
door, the partial leisure which is to make the open 
door available for working men and women. We 
can only do this through smaller institutions, by 
scattering the universities and taking them in very 
fact to the people ; only by casting out the useless, 
meaningless toil, and redistributing the essential 
remainder, so that into each life there shall come 
a sound temperance, the temperance of moderate 
toil and sufficient leisure. This saner life can 



AT THE UNIVERSITY 315 

alone bring the opportunity to use the culture of 
the university. 

In proposing that the university shall be the 
educational process of all men and women, I am 
but proposing that it shall fulfill its obvious func- 
tion in realizing the social purpose; for the social 
purpose, I cannot too often repeat, is not the pur- 
pose of the few, but of the many, of the whole ; 
and this purpose, under all disguises and contra- 
dictions and eclipses, is just this practical study 
and pursuit of perfection. When, therefore, the 
university fails to reach the masses, fails to touch 
their lives with genuine culture and aspiration, it 
fails in a very grave social trust : and in the full 
sweep of those newer democratic forces which are 
to-day enkindling the hearts of men, the univer- 
sity of the old regime will either be renovated or 
supplanted — renovated, if it embrace the more 
comprehensive purpose ; supplanted, if it does not. 

Those who are satisfied with the Grecian plan 
of life, a seeming excellence made possible by a 
foundation of human slavery, — and this, mark 
you, is also the American plan and practice, — those 
who are satisfied with this plan, and who are willing 
to believe that they profit by it, cannot be expected 
to enter with any great degree of enthusiasm upon 
the work of giving up privileges and assuming 
common duties. Yet there is but one privilege a 
man may properly cling to. It is the privilege of 
doing a man's share in the necessary toil of the 
world, so that other men may have men's shares in 



316 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

the leisure and delight of the world. It is this 
spirit which will make the university available as 
the process of the whole. 

We have been here considering a very grave prob- 
lem, and I hope not altogether from the outside. It 
is a part of the larger problem of our whole social 
life. While we have only been able to touch upon 
this problem, we have, perhaps, gone deep enough 
to satisfy the query with which the chapter started 
out, the query as to what type of university will 
satisfy the social purpose. And the answer is, 
that it must be a university with wide-open door ; 
that it must represent the educational process o£ 
all men and women ; that it must offer initial as 
well as advanced work in all of its departments ; 
that it must appeal to the love and interest of its 
students; that it must preserve the integrity of 
their organisms, leaving them richer, humanly 
speaking, at the end of the process than at the 
beginning ; that it must provide for the betterment 
of all organisms which are deficient. To do this 
is to realize the social purpose ; to do less than this 
is to fail. 

I venture to outline so broad a programme be- 
cause I believe it to be a thoroughly practical pro- 
gramme, and because I believe that we shall have 
no difficulty in carrying it out just so soon as we 
become a genuinely social people, just so soon as 
we desire the complete human life for the neigh- 
bor as well as for the self. The first step is an 
increased social sensitiveness, a keener social con- 



AT THE UNIVERSITY 317 

science. We want a wholesome concern for the 
salvation of the social group, and we want a very 
watchful eye for the happiness of the present life. 
And it is coming, not haltingly, but with rapid 
strides, first, into the hearts of men, as a senti- 
ment ; then into the minds of men, as an idea ; 
then into the action of men, as the process of 
democracy. And the social purpose, organic hu- 
man wealth, will be the purpose of the university 
for all men and women, just as it is the purpose 
of the schools for all boys and girls, and for all 
children. 



CHAPTER X 

THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE 

There comes a time when the process of formal 
education ends. Childhood has come and gone; 
youth is past ; adult life is reached. The lower 
school and the high school have made their several 
contributions. Even the university has given the 
larger part of its own service, and must be content 
in the future with occasional and casual ministra- 
tion. But life has not passed, the social purpose is 
not exhausted, and just as surely the educational 
process may not consistently end. It is only that 
the process has changed hands. It has ceased to 
be formal and official, ceased to be the work of 
any institution, however august, and has become 
the sole work of the individual himself. When the 
university drops the work of education, or even the 
larger part of it, and each individual takes it up 
for himself, the work assumes a different character, 
for it is built out of quite different material and 
conditions. It becomes in a very practical sense 
original work, an adventure in the unknown. Since 
this work has to do with life in its larger aspect, 
and since life is of all experiments the most divine, 
we may well call this final process in education the 



THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE 319 

experimental life, the process of men and women 
in action. 

When one announces that quite the most magni- 
ficent thing about life is life, one is not toying with 
the words. One is simply announcing a vital truth, 
and one that is very obvious. But it is a plati- 
tude which will well bear repeating, for rich and 
poor alike, the world over, are squandering nothing 
quite so remorselessly as just this most magnificent 
of all their possessions, their life. The poor are 
squandering it on food and shelter and clothing, 
and very wretched stuff at that; sometimes they 
are squandering it in forced or self -chosen idleness. 
The middle classes are squandering it on a some- 
what better grade of the so-called necessaries, and 
in still larger measure they are squandering it on 
the hazard of wealth. The rich are squandering it 
on the bolder hazard of greater wealth, and in pur- 
suit of impossible pleasure, — pleasure bought at 
the expense of another. But in the midst of this 
disorder, and enabling us, by the contrast, to recog- 
nize it as disorder, one does see, here and there, men 
and women spending life wisely and beautifully, 
living the experimental life, and more thrifty still, 
one sees on all sides, the children. 

Now whether we squander life on the trifling 
pursuits of the majority, or whether we spend it 
wisely and beautifully, after the manner of the 
minority, will all depend upon the ideas which we 
bring to the adventure. The same stone may be 
fashioned into a temple of the spirit or into a for- 



320 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

tress of cruelty : it depends upon the idea of the 
builder. The same metal may be wrought into 
sword or ploughshare : it depends upon the idea 
of the artificer. The same grain may nourish as 
food or deprave as drink : it depends upon the idea 
of the husbandman. So the same life may be 
squandered on that which is not worth while, or 
expended on that which is excellent : it depends 
upon the idea of the man. The altogether sig- 
nificant, compelling, momentous thing is the idea. 
This is at once the hope of all advance movements, 
and their despair. It is the hope, because the right 
idea pierces all obstacles, and accomplishes the im- 
possible, — the triumphant idea becomes the tri- 
umphant fact. It is the despair, because the trans- 
mutation of coward ideas into heroic ideas is the 
work of years, of generations. In the absence of 
the right idea, the force and material of the uni- 
verse avail nothing. 

It has been the custom, and continues to be the 
custom, to regard education as a process which ends 
for the masses with the lower school ; for the more 
fortunate, with the high school ; and for the gifted 
few, with the university. We speak pityingly of 
the man whose early education has been neglected, 
but have no pity for our fellows or ourself that 
we are neglecting the far greater opportunity of a 
later and more mature education. To have edu- 
cation cover the whole of life for all of us is not 
regarded by any great number of people as more 
than a very idle dream. But to advocate this 



THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE 321 

dream as a thoroughly serious and practical plan 
of life, a workable idea, is the purpose of the pre- 
sent chapter ; for such a plan is only to extend the 
scheme of a rational, social education to its logical 
completion. The obstacle to be overcome is an 
anti-social idea, that poor idea which makes us be- 
lieve in things rather than in men, believe in indi- 
vidual profit and privilege rather than in the social 
good fortune and individual human wealth. Such 
a conception of society is the very opposite of that 
which comes from the application of the philosophic 
idea to the affairs of every-day life, is indeed the 
defeat of that truer and more defensible social 
purpose. The real goal is organic good fortune for 
each and all, and may efface itself before no scheme 
of material wealth. 

This is the only sense in which it is possible for all 
of us to become wealthy, this wealth of individual 
organic power. For the wealth of the market, 
great as it is, and great as we want it to be, houses 
and lands and goods and the apparatus of produc- 
tion and transportation, this immense and growing 
wealth is still not sufficient to make us all wealthy 
in any individual way. And this wealth, even if 
it were enough, would quite lose its power if by 
any chance it came to even distribution. For 
whatever may be one's social creed, it is impossible 
to deny that the present power of wealth depends 
upon its inequality, depends upon its power to 
command the service of other people. On the 
one side, we have the wealth of the market, and on 



322 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

the other side, we have human need or human 
greed, usually human need. It is poverty which 
gives power to this sort of wealth, to individual 
material wealth. It is only difference of level that 
makes the wealth available. Some one else must 
be in want. The stream which does not run down 
hill turns no mill. The magnificence of private 
wealth is a magnificence which is only made possi- 
ble by the drudgery of a multitude of weary work- 
ers, by their practical slavery. 

When one criticises a tyranny, one must condemn 
both parties to it, both the tyrant who tyrannizes 
and the masses who submit. When one criticises 
a plutocracy one must be equally impartial, for a 
plutocracy is possible only where both rich and poor 
consent to the idea. In America, the unsuccessful 
man cannot plume himself upon being more right- 
eous than the successful one, for both consented to 
the idea ; and we did this, partly because the opera- 
tion had never with any very loud voice been called 
in question, and still more perhaps because the 
chances of gain were so great and so alluring that 
they blinded us to the real significance of what we 
were doing. We had a virgin continent to ex- 
plore, field and forest and mine to be had for the 
taking, and we had, the more the pity, the captive 
black man of Africa and the disinherited white man 
of Europe to do the work, and yield us the profit. 
And this work of double exploitation, the exploita- 
tion of a continent and of a people, has gone on 
so unfalteringly that now, instead of the democracy 



THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE 323 

which we started out to realize, we have a country 
with two classes in it, those who have, and those who 
have not. And we glory in our work, in this con- 
quest of a continent, and this piling up of great 
wealth ; but when the story of the last century conies 
to be written by a later and more moral hand, it 
will picture a century of black and white slavery 
quite as genuine as the slavery of the mediaeval 
centuries which we affect to discredit. 

And for this state of affairs, shocking as it un- 
doubtedly is, no one class is to blame, neither the 
rich nor the poor. We started out somewhat even, 
at least we natives. We gambled for the most 
part honestly. Some won, some lost ; but the sin 
of winning was no greater than the sin of losing. 
The sin was in the gambling. We are all to 
blame, for we all consented to the idea, to this 
insatiable itching palm, to this profit-taking at a 
human cost. 

But now the case has another aspect, and is 
brought nearer home. The continent is possessed : 
the European recruits have become American citi- 
zens. The chance of fortune is so far diminished 
that even the chance of work is guarded : America, 
a country which started out to be a democracy, the 
refuge of all ,who were sore oppressed, has so far 
abandoned her mission that she accepts without 
shame a policy of exclusion. The time has come 
when we must either give up our passion for profit, 
or must exploit our own fellow-citizens. The dread- 
ful results of our profit-hunger are too manifest on 



324 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

all sides, and notably in our large cities, for us to 
be able any longer to plead ignorance. 

It is this older, profit-tainted view of life which 
is responsible for the custom of regarding educa- 
tion as a limited process, and speculation as really 
the main business of life. It is a genuine gambling 
spirit, for it makes men willing to stake every- 
thing — health, beauty, accomplishment, goodness, 
life itself — on the chance of a possession which, 
when compared with these superb things, is piti- 
ably, infinitesimally small. It has made possible 
such a monstrous expression as " the almighty dol- 
lar." It has made possible many worse things. 
So long as such a view prevails, "business" will 
stand as the constant rival to education, and by 
limiting the process as far as possible, will mean 
practically the defeat of the social purpose. At 
the present moment, it must be confessed that this 
business view of life does prevail. Even boys in 
good circumstances, financially speaking, drop out 
of the lower schools and the high schools, go 
stragglingly to college, for they have the very 
natural feeling that if profit is the main business 
of life, the sooner they get about it the better. 
And then this fact that wealth is wealth, only 
because poverty is poverty, makes wealth essen- 
tially the enemy of popular education, for poverty 
and education never have gone hand in hand, and 
never can. The material part of life must be at- 
tended to first ; one must have food and shelter and 
clothing; and when this problem presses heavily, 



THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE 325 

as it does upon the great majority of our people, 
we can have little hope of making education co- 
extensive even with youth, no hope whatever of 
making it coextensive with life. And so I must 
regard the present individualistic administration of 
our resources as distinctly anti-social, since it is 
defeating the process of education, a process whose 
defeat is a crime, and so defeating that social pur- 
pose which gives to this process its high compulsion. 
It is as an educator with a turn for the practical that 
I want to see such a social administration of these 
bountiful resources as will make education general 
and coextensive with life. This can never be so 
long as we pull down our neighbors' stockades in 
order to keep the wolf out of our own garden. The 
practical method would be to make common cause 
against the wolf. The administration of common 
justice has been found to be infinitely better than 
the operation of private revenge. 

In saying, then, that the majority of our people 
are squandering their life, one does not condemn 
them, for under the present social regime it is al- 
most impossible for them to do otherwise. The 
way out for the masses of these people cannot be 
individual ; it must be social. 

And yet we have a small minority living the 
experimental life and carrying on the process of 
education to the very end, and they are doing it 
necessarily under the present regime. It is an 
entirely practical and possible plan for some, and 
it would be possible for all if the idea of the 



326 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

experimental life could penetrate the armor of an 
unsocial and unfavorable environment. One by- 
one, they might escape into the better kingdom. 
But that inaptitude for ideas which is engendered 
by want and misery is a prison which must always 
be reckoned with. Those of us who have come 
into a purer region of thought through the favor- 
ing influence of a more gracious environment, and 
have attained something of the rational life, must 
not expect the same high spirit on the part of our 
less fortunate brother and sister. If we do, we 
are hardly causationists, hardly artist-philosophers. 
Ours is the responsibility, the high privilege, of 
so acting upon the social environment that better 
thoughts will come into the hearts of men, and 
better deeds will flow out of the more liberal, more 
human thought. A man constantly on the defen- 
sive, constantly fighting cold and hunger and 
nakedness, is not open to the gentler influence of 
a redeeming idea. Nor need we be fearful of en- 
feebling our neighbor, making him less independ- 
ent, less manly, less capable of wholesome personal 
initiative, — which is the stock argument of social 
competition and anarchy. Charity does this, ser- 
vility does this, the habit of wage-taking does it, but 
decent, wholesome life conditions, never. If they 
did, in what great danger should we persons of the 
leisure class stand, and how eager we should all be 
to abandon the vantage ground of a little property 
and throw ourselves into those positions of struggle 
which we fancied to be so admirable for the charac- 



THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE 327 

ter and well-being of our neighbor of the masses ! 
But it seems that we do not do this, do not court 
bad food and impure air and inadequate clothing 
and hideous surroundings and exhausting toil. We 
know full well that these are not the conditions of 
liberal thought and redeeming ideas. We know 
that health comes only from a wholesome life. 

Under our present social conditions, the experi- 
mental life is possible for only two classes of per- 
sons, both of them privileged classes, the people of 
superior endowment, and the people of means 
tempered by ideas. The one class has the highest 
possible measure of independence ; the other class 
has a borrowed independence secure only so long 
as the ideas hold out. But before we look into the 
matter of how these people live the experimental 
life, let us inquire what it is to live that life, since 
we have only said in a broad way that it is to 
carry the process of education through the whole 
of life. 

The pursuit of perfection is the pursuit of that 
which is excellent and beautiful, and this is what 
we mean by organic wealth, the sound, beautiful, 
accomplished organism, the heart of brotherhood, 
the reverent, cosmic spirit. One on whom this 
vision of the perfect life has laid firm hold cannot 
regard the quest as peculiar to any age or time, or 
place or circumstance, cannot indeed regard it as 
a quest which will ever be satisfied, save as a pro- 
gressive realization. He must look upon it as the 
major end of both the individual and the social 



328 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

life. As such it must determine the disposition of 
the days, what occupations are possible, and what 
are not; must declare for or against all contem- 
plated plans, and must be coextensive with every 
bodily and intellectual activity, every emotional 
impulse. The man who undertakes so comprehen- 
sive a quest as this must be as resolute as one of 
Arthur's own knights, and more faithful. The 
practical carrying out of such a plan of experi- 
mental living is a concrete operation and may not 
be impatient of details. 

Perfection — using the term always in a relative 
sense — is a social as well as an individual quality, 
and is not open to hermits. It is gained by the 
developing of one's own personal powers, and by 
the right ordering of one's relations with others. 
It has always this dual aspect. So the man, liv- 
ing the experimental life, will be very jealous of his 
person, of his health and his manhood and his or- 
ganic wholeness and accomplishment. The admi- 
rable purposes of the spirit require an admirable 
tool. And so no activity will be possible which 
may not be idealized and made to minister to the 
furtherance of the complete life. But he will be 
just as jealous of his relations with others, that 
these relations shall be fine and helpful and ideal. 
The magnificent personality of an experimentalist 
is magnificent only in action. It gets itself real- 
ized only in the rendering of some honest social 
service. To live the experimental life is then to 
make each year, each day, each hour contribute 



THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE 329 

to the increase of one's own personal power and 
goodness, and to allow this incomparable purpose 
to be interfered with by no schemes of profit, no 
smaller and meaner ends. Such a life is experi- 
mental, because it has but one fixed element in 
it, and that element is its purpose, the quest of 
culture, the study and pursuit of perfection. And 
such a quest as this demands the boldest kind of 
experimenting. It demands a willingness to go 
here and there, to submit to this and that influ- 
ence, to do one thing and then another, to be ever 
open to the emerging requirements of the spirit. 
Literally it means to take one's life in one's hand ; 
to cultivate a certain detachment ; to fight shy of 
mechanical engagements and routine prisons ; to 
avoid all avenues to the commonplace, however 
luxurious and inviting, — in a word, it is to be a 
soldier of good fortune. 

It is very easy to be dull. It is very easy to 
give your second-best, to be less excellent than 
you might have been. It is very easy to decline 
accomplishments which require hard work, to de- 
cline a health and beauty which ask the price of 
sturdy living, to decline human service which in- 
volves an overflowing measure of love and skill. 
It is very easy to call laziness patience ; to call 
meanness prudence ; to call cowardice caution ; to 
call the commonplace the practical, and mere in- 
ertia conservatism. 

Now this turn of ours for taking the line of least 
resistance is so deep-set that to shake one's self 



330 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

free of it is a prodigiously hard thing. The aver- 
age man finds the world serviceable to his hand. 
He can buy his clothes ready-made, and his shirts 
and his shoes ; even his opinions can be got of the 
newsboy for a penny. He is patted on the back 
as modest and useful, and is praised for being 
content with that situation in life to which it has 
pleased God to call him. And he is particularly 
patted and particularly praised by those shrewd 
persons who find his docility profitable. And then 
when the chapter is finished, and this useful man 
dies, he has a little obituary notice in his favorite 
newspaper, telling how for twenty-five years he 
was the faithful servant of such and such a cor- 
poration, or for eighteen years never took a single 
holiday, or for thirty-three years was the untiring 
member of some giant, profit-taking enterprise. If 
his profits were big enough, his picture is added. 
And this record of omitted growth and wasted 
human opportunity is made the subject of journal- 
istic eulogy. Brave indeed is the young person 
who can be brought up in an atmosphere so satu- 
rated with untruth as this and not believe that the 
path of duty is to go and do likewise. 

When I say these things to my friends, they tell 
me that I do not sufficiently allow for the beauty 
of faithfulness ; but I have to answer them as I 
answer myself, that faithfulness in a bad cause is 
not admirable ; that the halting, partial service of 
those who seek with still half-opened eyes to fol- 
low the higher ideal is infinitely the braver loyalty. 



THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE 331 

Now I am not reciting these human calamities 
in any spirit of more-righteous-than-thou, for I 
well know that unless Heaven help me, and I help 
myself, I shall repeat the same calamities in my 
own life, and I know that unless the same help 
come to you, you will do the same. But there do 
come to all of us occasional moments of insight, 
when we see that this drivel of the children of the 
established order is not the divine message of the 
great universe ; that this message, on the contrary, 
is forever proclaiming openness and plasticity and 
generosity and fearlessness and totality. It is not 
proclaiming the modesty of high adventure un- 
essayed. It is whispering always, — Be thou per- 
fect, perfect, even as I am perfect, as God is per- 
fect. To fulfill this high mission and keep alive 
the universal charge in one's own heart is not to 
follow the line of least resistance, however easy ; is 
not to be dull, however great the temptation ; is 
not to be commonplace and commercial and sal- 
aried. It is to be the fullest measure of a man 
that the bit of flesh and bone you call your own 
allows you to be. And to do this is to keep one's 
self free and unsold and unattached, to experi- 
ment with life, and be ready to brave the unknown 
of a possible but as yet unrealized experience. 
The commonplace and commercial life has at bot- 
tom the fear of being unprovided for. The experi- 
mental life must " fear nothing but fear." 

The point of view is the great thing, but the 
popular point of view has a curious way of in- 



332 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

verting values. To substitute the pursuit of per- 
sonal power and excellence for the conventional 
pursuit of wealth and family and reputation is 
commonly estimated to be on the whole a rather 
selfish proceeding, and the experimentalist must 
be prepared in perfect serenity of spirit to meet 
this inexplicable charge not once but many times, 
to meet it indeed until the splendid results which 
flow out of the simple living of the better life have 
become too manifest to be denied. It is needless 
to say that this charge of selfishness will not bear 
investigation. No amount of personal industry 
will make a man wealthy. The days are not long 
enough and human strength is not great enough. 
The only way to become wealthy is to appropriate 
a part of the wealth created by other people, that 
is, to exploit labor; or to appropriate the wealth 
created by Nature, that is, to exploit the national 
resource ; or, by speculation, to appropriate the 
wealth created by the growth and movement of 
population, that is, to exploit society. And these 
operations are not the operations of the unselfish 
spirit. They may hardly be offered as a desirable 
substitute for the pursuit of that human wealth 
which so blesses its possessor and makes no other 
man the poorer. And if the operations themselves 
be questionable, surely no amount of good purpose 
in the subsequent expenditure of the spoils can 
redeem the operations and make them admirable. 
Under these circumstances the pursuit of wealth 
cannot be a possible plan of life for the man whose 



THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE 333 

eyes are resolutely set upon the things of excel- 
lence and beauty, cannot, in short, be a part of the 
experimental life. 

The upbuilding of a family must be looked 
upon in much the same way. The ability to sup- 
port children, even without exploiting labor or 
Nature or society in their behalf, does not con- 
stitute the right to have children, the moral, es- 
thetic right. Unless a man has first gained per- 
sonal power and excellence himself, he cannot 
transmit these qualities to his offspring, and he is 
ill performing the function of race preservation if 
he preserve that which is not admirable, his own 
weakness and half power and lack of totality. The 
pursuit of family is only admirable when one has 
first ordered one's own life in the paths of excel- 
lence and beauty. 

And in this matter of a reputation, by whatever 
series of exploits it is won, it is marred in the very 
making of it if it be touched by a trace of self- 
consciousness. The military leader charging for 
the White House, the actor with his thoughts be- 
tween the pit and the gallery, the writer with his 
eye on the public, the painter working for the 
market, do not achieve the sort of reputation which 
a man in the sober moments of life would care to 
have or work for. It is the sincere, unregardful 
working out of one's own life purposes, the attain- 
ment of power and excellence for the sake of 
power and excellence, and not for the sake of 
applause ; it is this quiet, unobtrusive private pro- 



334 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

cess which has given the world its calendar of All 
Saints. 

The pressure of life is to make us all average 
men. It is to force us along the line of least re- 
sistance, and to land us finally in the abyss of the 
commonplace, making heaven a bit of distant blue 
sky above us rather than a garden of delight 
round about us. And this coward plan of life, 
this abdication of the best, is recommended to us 
in all seriousness as something quite dutiful and 
admirable. In reality, it is high treason to the 
human spirit. 

The alphabet is a remarkable set of characters. 
It contains, in fact, the whole dictionary. It is 
only that the letters have not yet been arranged. 
And the dictionary is a still more remarkable col- 
lection of symbols. It contains, as some French- 
man has long since observed, every good thing 
that may be said. It is only that the words have 
not yet been grouped. And to-day is a remarkable 
moment of time. In it is every possibility of ex- 
perience. It is only that the experience has been 
unlived. But to this larger experience and this 
larger life, the universe daily invites us. Yet for 
the most part we lend deaf ears and turn blind 
eyes. To lead the experimental life is to accept this 
superb invitation and to pass into that region of 
delight and beauty and magnificence which is the 
vital life. 

It would be a poor service to commend a plan 
of life which might not be carried out, to sing the 



THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE 335 

praises of a paradise quite surely lost. But it is 
not so with this better life. It is an entirely pos- 
sible plan. If one has some means, tempered by 
ideas, and is content with that simple life which 
gives the spirit its necessary breathing space, then 
one has both the time and the impulse needed for 
the experimental life. If one has superior endow- 
ment, the impulse is assured, and the committee on 
ways and means, a committee which has permanent 
headquarters in every brain, however idealistic, 
has, on the whole, an easy problem ahead of it. 
And this superiority need not be overwhelming, 
need not amount to genius, not even to talent, 
need not, in fact, exceed the slender possession of 
the majority of the middle classes. Good health, 
average natural ability, the elements of a liberal 
education, these represent, it seems to me, what 
may be called the material part of the equipment. 
The spiritual equipment is equally simple, but some- 
what more rare. It is an unfaltering determina- 
tion to do nothing which is not essentially up- 
lifting to the self, and at the same time a genuine 
social service. 

In reality, these spiritual requirements are one. 
It is impossible to lift one's self at the expense 
of others. It is equally impossible to serve others 
without at the same time serving one's self. Any 
growth in the man which does not serve the com- 
munity must be counted a false growth, and any 
service to the community which sacrifices the man 
must be counted a false service. In spite of seem- 



336 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

ing exceptions this solidarity of interest is literally 
true, and one sees how true it is if one but remem- 
bers that the universe is at bottom a moral uni- 
verse, and that man is essentially a social being. 
The drama of human life is not a game of human 
solitaire. It is a drama made possible only by the 
human, social relation of the players. When one 
starts out on the quest of human perfection, one 
can make no progress whatever save through these 
relations and through this human interplay. Even 
the quest of bodily excellence, of strength and 
beauty and accomplishment, apparently the most 
private aspect of culture, has this equal gift for 
others. The strength must show itself, the beauty 
must be seen, the accomplishment must express 
itself in action. And when we come to the heart 
of this organic excellence, to its reverence and its 
goodness, we come to qualities which might, it is 
true, express themselves in the desert in bodily 
purity and self-respect, in communion with God, 
but which require for their full expression the 
manifold relations of social life. The most com- 
plete and perfect form of selfishness is the most 
complete and perfect form of altruism. 

We sum up, then, the spiritual requirement of 
the experimental life in no theoretic way when we 
say that it is an unfaltering impulse towards the 
unfolding and perfecting of one's own spirit, the 
unfaltering practical impulse which will not be 
denied, or turned aside, or quenched. 

And the realization of the experimental life is 



THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE 337 

the giving free play to this impulse in every single 
issue of the daily life. We should fare but ill in 
this interminable quest if we had to be forever 
conscious of it, for that would make us far from 
simple-minded, and anything but companionable. 
Happily we are under no such compulsion. The 
very striving may be made as habitual as courtesy, 
or standing up straight, or any other of the instincts 
of the well-bred life. The desire for the best may 
pass into one's general attitude towards life and be 
its determining force. 

I do not forget that a man must live, and that 
the material basis of life costs money. If one is 
without means, without tools or land or house, one 
has no choice ; one must sell one's time for the 
moment and serve for hire. There is a choice, 
however, in the work itself, — work that a man may 
do and still keep his manhood, work that is full of 
significance and meaning and beauty, and work 
that a man may not do and keep himself a man, 
the work that is meaningless and unworthy and 
dishonest. And I am told by those who are trying 
to lead the beautiful life and are finding it hard, 
that it is the latter sort of work which most com- 
monly offers. Meanwhile the landlord and the 
provision dealer and the tailor are importunate : 
there is sore need of money. It would be easy to 
suffer want if it touched only one's self, but when 
it bears heavily upon delicately reared women and 
little children, upon the family for whom one is 
bound to provide, then the want is very bitter. 



338 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

The temptation to accept any sort of work which 
yields the much-needed money is a sore temptation, 
and one may well pray not to be led into it. Even if 
one escape this shipwreck, and secure work which 
is morally clean, the deeper morality of whether it 
is the work most suitable to one's own human 
needs, and of how long one may properly continue 
to do this particular kind of work, this deeper 
morality remains to be satisfied. If the work is 
dull and stupefying, if it fail to offer a chance for 
increased development and power, then however 
great the wage, it is immoral work, and one is 
bound by the requirements of the experimental 
life to give it up, for such work as this is not lead- 
ing one to the point one has determined upon. If 
a work has nothing to recommend it but its wage, 
it stands quite condemned. 

When new work offers, and one submits it to 
this human test, and asks with careful scrutiny as 
to whether the work ministers to the needs of the 
worker, it is comparatively easy to properly esti- 
mate it ; but the task is far more subtle when a work 
already entered upon, a work which did at one time 
clearly serve the purposes of development, gradu- 
ally ceases to render this service. It is so very 
easy to go on, for in the most alert of us there is a 
tremendous amount of inertia. The remembrance 
of the old enthusiasm remains. It is difficult, too, 
to seek new work and to strike out on untried paths, 
and this is particularly true if the salary meanwhile 
has been growing larger and one's expenditures have 



THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE 339 

been keeping pace with it. One tells one's self 
that one is very useful, and that no other man can 
do the work quite so well. One's friends, perhaps 
indeed one's family and one's employers, say the 
same thing. The pressure is all for keeping the man 
right there. You see how completely the point of 
view has changed and swung around from the hu- 
man requirement to the thought of the work. And 
do you know what happens ? In the majority of 
cases the pressure prevails. The man stays and stays 
and stays, holds on to his position as if it were the 
great thing in life ; becomes each year more and 
more of a machine, and less and less interesting as a 
man. He bears with fortitude the loss of his soul, 
and shows the white feather whenever his position 
is thought to be in danger. It is as if a child at 
school who manifested some aptitude for long divi- 
sion were kept forever at that, instead of passing 
on to new and helpful work in geometry and cal- 
culus ; kept forever doing sums in long division, 
until at last he was gathered to his fathers, a slowly 
finished quotient. 

This mechanicalizing of life, this making of it 
something quite automatic and insensible, is a veri- 
table tragedy, for it means quite surely the death 
of the spirit. One need not go far afield for illus- 
trations. How many men and women in your own 
limited circle of acquaintance have been turned 
into human failures by the bribe of a too large 
salary. They have been unwilling to let go : they 
have been prudential and cowardly : in the end 



340 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

they have lost their life. To lead the experimental 
life is to put the human gain first, and always first, 
to value the work, the position, only so long as the 
human reaction is helpful and desirable. It is to 
pass from post to post ; from place to place, if need 
be ; from vocation to vocation, and to land as soon 
as possible in the best of all positions, the position 
of the independent worker, where one is no longer 
hired and salaried, but is the master of one's own 
time and energy and spirit. It is only as true men 
and women, living the free and independent life of 
the unhired and unsold, of the people who have at 
least the good fortune of seZ/*-possession, that we 
can come into the largest good for ourselves and 
can render the most genuine social service. 

Ours is an age of gigantic achievement along 
material lines, but it is not j^et an age of any great 
independence of thought. It is an age of stock 
opinion and concealed opinion, of ill-disguised ser- 
vility. The majority of our people are hired ; the 
rest give hire. Between them stands this wall, a 
very real wall, keeping them from meeting like 
true men and women in all frankness and sincerity. 
One hears it asked, — Shall a man quarrel with his 
bread-and-butter ? But it is not explained how it 
came about that a man's bread-and-butter should 
be in the keeping of another. And I venture to 
affirm, after regarding at some length the free lance 
and the salaried man, that the effect of taking wage 
upon the majority of people is simply disastrous, 
spiritually disastrous. Life is altogether too pre- 



THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE 341 

cious a thing to sell it to another at any price 
whatever, and I count it a national misfortune and 
a national weakness that in the great democracy 
which we tried to set up and failed there should 
be so few men who are masters of themselves, and 
worthy to uphold so great a political idea. 

It is then a first requisite of the experimental 
life that one shall as soon as possible decline out- 
right to be hired, however insinuating the wage, and 
shall declare once for all for the life of self-pos- 
session and self-mastery. And it is not so difficult 
to do this as one might at first imagine. The real 
issue is in the idea. The men who want to be free, 
can be free. Once a little ahead, and the man who 
has the good health, average natural ability, and 
the elements of a liberal education essential to an 
experimentalist, can make an independent liveli- 
hood in many acceptable ways. If he have a turn 
for first-hand, primitive methods, he can go directly 
to the soil ; as farmer, fruit-raiser, flower-grower, as 
shepherd, woodman, miner, he can make a living 
and still be a man ; and if his undertaking require 
more than individual power, as modern industrial 
undertakings commonly do, he can through cooper- 
ation utilize this corporate power without paying 
the price of his own freedom. In England, at the 
present time, fully one seventh of all the people 
are directly interested in some cooperative enter- 
prise. 

If our experimentalist prefer handicraft, he has 
a world of possible independent activity opening 



342 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

before him. If he have a turn for the arts or for 
professional service, he can as artist, architect, sur- 
veyor, engineer, make an independent living. In 
purely intellectual fields he may be a teacher or a 
writer, and in certain churches he may still be a 
clergyman. In fact, the only activities denied to 
those who decline to be hired are the dull and 
uninteresting activities which require machines in 
place of men. My point is that any one, man or 
woman, with the modest equipment of an experi- 
mentalist, and a little bit ahead, can always go to 
work at something which will contribute at once to 
the individual and the public good. It is by such 
independence as this that persons of superior en- 
dowment rob material wealth of its power. Silently 
and with superb disdain, they are the constant and 
successful rivals of this wealth. For wealth, be it 
remembered, is quite an inert and powerless thing 
by itself. It has power only as it has power to 
command the service of others. And just as soon 
as superior people decline to render this service for 
hire, just so soon as they decide to be their own 
masters, wealth will lose its tremendous power, and 
the experimental life will be increasingly open to 
all men. And I find myself going back always to 
that older and uneconomic view of life that the 
best human service is too august a thing to be paid 
for in the lower coin of the market. It must be 
accepted, this august human service, in the same 
way that we accept the bounty of nature, as a gra- 
cious gift. 



THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE 343 

It is true that there come times when the bread- 
and-butter problem presses, and on the idealist, on 
the believer in unit man, quite as surely as on 
other persons. But the problem is already half 
met when one elects the life of simplicity, of plain 
food and modest shelter and serviceable dress and 
sane amusement. And the other half is much less 
difficult than we are prone to believe it. The diffi- 
cult thing is to make the start, to burn one's ships, 
and declare once for all for the free life. But when 
the start is made, when one resolutely declines all 
occupations not ennobling and human, when one 
devotes one's self absolutely to the self-chosen task, 
there will be no lack of bread; for work done in 
this spirit has a quality and distinction to it which 
even the world of profit and speculation recognizes 
and values. No one in health, living soundly and 
truly, need fear the baying of the wolf at his own 
door. There are multitudes who will tell you that 
these schemes for ideal living are not practical, but 
they have no right to speak, these people who have 
never tried them. Surely the men and women who 
have essayed the ideal life and who have succeeded, 
are the better guides. And they unite in affirming, 
as an experimental result, that the noblest philoso- 
phy which can be entertained in the heart can like- 
wise be translated literally into the daily life. 

The secret of the experimental life is this perfect 
freedom, this openness of mind, this unfaltering 
progress. It is the extension of the educational 
spirit into the whole of life. In education we do a 



344 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

thing only until we know how to do it. Then we 
pass on to some new task. When we have read 
Caesar, we turn to Virgil ; when we have mastered 
geometry, we pass on to trigonometry ; when we 
have analyzed some simple chemical, we throw it 
away and essay something more difficult ; when we 
have done the easier work in wood, we make a box. 
And if we failed to do this, failed to pass on con- 
stantly from the five-fingered exercises to the sona- 
tas, from the multiplication table to the calculus, 
we should be doing so stupid a thing that the 
schools would be absolutely doomed, and formal 
education would altogether disappear from off the 
face of the earth. The same spirit may well be 
imported into that later and unofficial process of 
education, the daily life of the adult world. It is 
a stupid thing to go on all your life making nails 
or pins or buttons or shoes ; to go on growing the 
same-sized potatoes ; even to go on painting Madon- 
nas, perhaps making them, like Perugino, some- 
what less lovely at the end than in the beginning. 
It is a stupid thing to go on doing anything after 
the inspiration and joy and human profit have quite 
gone out of the doing. Life is simply what we 
get out of it, and it is a great pity to cheapen so 
magnificent a gift. 

The one bright spot in our commercialism is that 
its enterprises are often undertaken in the hope that 
their success will enable us to give our children all 
educational advantages. We want them to have a 
succession of masters ; to be taught this fact and 



THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE 345 

that accomplishment ; to go to college ; to travel, 
it may be, in Europe ; to spend the winter in the 
city, the summer in the country ; to taste life in all 
its fullness and variety. It may be that all this 
activity is not quite wise for people still so young, 
but it has at bottom a wise and helpful thought, 
the enrichment of life. Why should this process 
stop when the children come to be men and women, 
and could so much better respond to its advan- 
tages? Why should this same solicitous thought 
not be imported into our own more mature plan of 
life ? The world is so irrepressible a teacher. Her 
lessons are so vastly interesting. Her beauty is so 
superb and penetrating. The mere panorama of 
the world-life, the sweep of its processes, the untir- 
ing cycle of its activities, contain at first hand and 
in themselves all the elements of art and science. 
To be an experimentalist is to yield one's self un- 
reservedly to this comprehensive world teaching, 
to go here and there, to do this and that, to see one 
thing and another, to accept the world as a giant 
possibility and to use it to the full. It is to go to 
school all one's life to a perfect schoolmistress, — 
to the universe. To do otherwise is an ungracious, 
irreligious act. It is to decline life, and in its stead 
to accept a clerkship. 

In choosing such a rotation of occupation, one 
need run no risk of becoming the proverbial Jack- 
of -all-trades. The great people of the world have 
had this large versatility. You recall the tremen- 
dous sweep of Caesar's activities. You see Michel- 



346 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

angelo painting Madonnas and building bridges, 
frescoing ceilings and shaping David. You pic- 
ture Leonardo leading all Florence spellbound by 
the charm of his many-sided genius. In Goethe, 
you have the poet, philosopher, statesman, scientist, 
artist, man of letters. In Shakespeare you have 
an epitome of the world. In my own fellow-towns- 
man, Franklin, you have a man distinguished, if 
I have counted rightly, in at least eleven different 
directions. If this versatility were simply the pro- 
duct of genius, it could hardly be used, even by 
way of suggestion, in shaping the life plans of 
average men ; but it is rather the condition of 
genius. The biography of achievement is the bio- 
graphy of men alive on many sides of their nature, 
of men taking active part in the drama of the 
world. It is easy to point to the ne'er-do-weels who 
have turned their hands to many things, but the list 
is more than matched by the people who do only 
one thing and still do it very badly. In both cases 
it depends upon the motive. If the will be weak, if 
the inner motive be insincere, all plans of life yield 
poor results. It is quite possible that industrially 
speaking you can get more out of a body of spe- 
cialized, automatic workers not disquieted by ideas 
above the dull and sordid occupations of the mo- 
ment. A nation of factory hands will doubtless 
produce more commodities than a nation of think- 
ers ; and to read many of our writers on economics, 
and to follow their impassioned utterances on the 
benefits of the division of labor, one might think 



THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE 347 

that this was the great social desideratum. But 
the question is as to whether we care more for 
commodities or for developed, accomplished human 
beings. The praise of special toil, of life measured 
in terms of salable products, comes, I notice, from 
the men who gather a profit from the output, and is 
echoed by those who by reason of the excessive toil 
and narrow interests involved in such a life are 
quite incapacitated for sound thought. But such 
is not the word of Jesus or of those other social 
teachers who speak of the beautiful life. This 
message has always the same refrain, the putting 
of the life ahead of meat, the body ahead of rai- 
ment, the recommending as the major concern of 
life that first seeking of the kingdom. This mes- 
sage of religion is reiterated by philosophy ; for 
religion and philosophy are at heart one and the 
same thing, and when translated into the terms of 
daily life give us that social purpose whose realiza- 
tion we have been endeavoring to further in work- 
ing out a consistent and adequate educational pro- 
cess. This process would be singularly ineffective 
if, after ministering to childhood and youth, to early 
manhood and womanhood, it should suddenly cease, 
and should allow the social purpose to give way be- 
fore the doctrine of the market. It seems to me, 
then, that the experimental life is not a thing to be 
taken up or laid down as you will, casually and capri- 
ciously. It seems to me to have the same impera- 
tiveness for later life that the more forma] processes 
of education have for earlier life, and as the joint 



348 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

programme of religion and philosophy and science 
to be altogether unescapable, unless religion and 
philosophy and science are likewise repudiated as 
guides to the practical conduct of life and quite 
relegated to the garret of doubtful hypothesis and 
fetish. There are minds quite inhospitable to phi- 
losophy and science, but which yet hold quite stub- 
bornly to what they conceive to be religion. There 
are minds to whom philosophy is everything. There 
are minds quite ready to part company with religion 
and philosophy in order to follow what they regard 
as the surer light of science. But there are few 
minds, if any, so completely agnostic as to deny all 
three aspects of what men hold to be the truth. I 
have been trying to show that religion, by teach- 
ing the contemporary inner process of the kingdom 
of heaven ; that philosophy, by teaching the present 
unfolding and perfecting of the human spirit ; and 
that science, by teaching the continuous, esthetic 
nature of the world-process, — are in reality teach- 
ing one and the same thing. It represents the so- 
cial purpose, and its programme is the programme 
of the social purpose, — the immediate, life-long, 
eternal quest of human wealth and power, the quest 
of strength and beauty and accomplishment and 
goodness. 

The end of life is human discipline, is not the 
getting of property, not even the getting of know- 
ledge, but is the getting of character and accom- 
plishment, a human acquisitiveness. This is an old 
message, but it is increasingly imperative. It is 



THE EXPERIMENTAL LIFE 349 

first of all to be, and then to know and to do, and 
only incidentally to have. This is the complete 
programme of the experimental life. As a plan 
of life, it is simply the extension of education ; and 
the extension of education, the making of education 
a life-process instead of a school-process, is in fact 
nothing less splendid than the practical carrying 
out of the quest of human perfection. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE AGENTS OF THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 

There is no sentiment, however catholic and 
august, which is not the private possession of an 
individual human heart. This measures the di- 
mensions of it, and establishes at once both its 
limitation and its reality. It is difficult not to 
personify our sentiments, and particularly those 
which have to do with anything so large as the 
social group ; to personify them so completely that 
we come to speak of them and think of them as 
something quite outside of ourselves and very 
much greater and more commanding. It is, of 
course, necessary to have some handle by which to 
manage these apparitions, a need which is com- 
monly supplied by means of some well-worn phrase. 
The Love of Country goes stalking about the 
land like a giant recruiting officer. The Balance 
of Trade — when in our favor — settles brood- 
ingly on our hearthstone with almost the con- 
solatory power of religion. The Good of Hu- 
manity, like a benign shepherd, drives us into 
curious pastures and sets us to nibbling at strange 
herbage. Good Times move along with the ex- 
hilaration of a case of champagne. I cannot but 



THE AGENTS OF THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 351 

think that we are more frequently the victims than 
the beneficiaries of this phrase-making, personify- 
ing habit. The good phrases become guardian 
spirits on whom we throw entirely too much of our 
own proper work. The bad phrases become devils 
at whose door we lay misfortunes, the cause of 
which belongs in reality much nearer home. In 
either case we become so much the less causa- 
tionists, so much the less earnest livers of the 
moral life. 

Unconsciously, and almost unavoidably, I have 
been speaking of the social purpose in the fore- 
going chapters in quite this personifying way, 
much as if the social purpose were a modern Ga- 
briel, whose trumpet blasts, now reaching only 
those of sensitive social ear, would in time rouse 
the whole world to its too-long delayed duty. One 
pictures the social purpose as a well-mannered 
young person in the traditional draperies, hovering 
over a commercial world, and vainly trying to in- 
duce a better practice. Such a conception, which, 
I confess, does grow out of our every-clay mode of 
speech, seems to me so altogether unhelpful and un- 
inspiring that I have thought it wise to devote this 
final chapter to a very practical attempt to bring 
the social purpose back from the empyrean into 
its proper home in the hearts of men. This reality 
of the social purpose as a purely human, individ- 
ual possession becomes the more manifest when 
one begins to make inquiry as to the agents of the 
social purpose. 



352 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

It is easy in a large way to make answer that 
as the social purpose concerns all persons, so all 
persons are the accredited agents of the social pur- 
pose. Stated in this bald way, what has just been 
said sounds very like a platitude. 

" If every one would see to his own reformation, 
How very easily we could reform the nation." 

So long as the educated classes believe that the 
present unideal state of affairs is due entirely to 
the ignorance and brutality of the masses, and rest 
there ; so long as the masses attribute their hard- 
ships solely to the pressure of the moneyed classes, 
and rest there ; so long as the middle, bourgeois 
class truckles to the aristocrats or masses, accord- 
ing as they prove the better customers, and rest 
there, — the greater and more social commonwealth 
will emerge but slowly. No appeal to the supposed 
virtues of that class to which one happens to be- 
long helps matters along very greatly, and denun- 
ciations of an alien class are equally ineffective. 
No class appeal is a social act, however flattering 
its phraseology. The hope of the world does not 
lie with the proletariat, fond as their leaders are of 
telling them that it does ; for the world of their 
creation would be a very dull, hard-fisted, stupid 
place. Nor does it rest with our smug traders, 
with their passion for shop-keeping and the com- 
monplace ; for, as a class, they have neither the 
muscle for working nor the disinterestedness for 
seeing. Neither can I feel that this great hope is 
the sole possession of even our educated, aristo- 



THE AGENTS OF THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 353 

cratic classes, the most promising of the three ; for 
in this gentler world it is too much forgotten that 
a certain amount of homely toil is a necessary con- 
dition of life ; the unchastened aristocratic plan 
would leave the social underpinning too insecure 
for the social superstructure. The problem of the 
social state is too large for any one class to solve. 
The only way out is for us to make common cause, 
and in the substantial solution which we might thus 
achieve, to pass out once for all from the narrow- 
ness and provinciality of class cleavage into the 
freedom and opportunity of brotherhood. 

But we can only reach this richer and more beau- 
tiful life of cooperation and brotherhood through 
the deepening and broadening of our own social 
instincts. This better life is the expression of a 
better thought. The sentiment must go before the 
action. And since both sentiment and action are 
distinctly individual possessions, it is in the human 
heart and in the human body that society must be 
redeemed. Each man, each woman, each child, is 
the agent of the social purpose. The work of so- 
cial realization must be carried out by a twofold 
process, by the socializing and humanizing and per- 
fecting of one's own individual life, — the brave 
living of the experimental life, — and by an untir- 
ing effort to foster the social instinct in others, — 
in one's relatives, one's friends, one's acquaintances, 
one's home community, one's country. 

It is idle illusion to believe that this social in- 
stinct hangs literally in the air, ready to precipi- 



354 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

tate in refreshing showers on the parched earth of 
human greed. Nothing of the sort happens. Pub- 
lic opinion is the sum of strictly private opinion. 
The Zeitgeist is not an extra-human personality, 
a Dantesque presence which divides the ether with 
that well-mannered young person who so charm- 
ingly personifies the social purpose. It is true 
that we have the curious phenomenon of mob- 
action, but the mob acts simply because each com- 
ponent so willed, and itself originates nothing. 
To cause the stampede, some one must cry " Fire ! " 
And it is noticeable that mob-action is distinctly 
less evolved, distinctly more partial, than the best 
individual action that could have been forthcoming. 
Vox populi, vox Dei, is not complimentary to the 
moral order of the world. 

It is to be remembered that the most powerful 
weapon of propaganda is example ; not example 
with one eye on the neighbor, and consequently 
more theatrical than genuine, but the sincere daily 
expression of one's own purified social instincts. 
And one must be contented with partial results 
until the full results can be reached. One cannot 
live the social life in an unsocial community, for 
the conditions do not allow it. One suffers always 
from the ignorance of one's neighbors. One is 
conscious of a forced complicity in every social 
crime. But one can live a more human and more 
social life than one has been living, and from each 
new vantage ground ascend another step. The 
community will follow, for the community is your- 



THE AGENTS OF THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 355 

self and your neighbors. And the failure of the 
neighbor is not so much due to the fact that he is 
at heart unsocial as it is to the fact that he has 
not been awakened. His is rather a negative posi- 
tion, a drifting with the uninformed current of 
affairs. The positive life counts out of proportion 
to its numerical strength. A sentiment must be 
measured not only by the number of persons who 
hold it, but by its own intensity and by the ab- 
sence of equally positive and persistent contrary 
sentiment. As an effective force, one social man 
in a community easily outbalances a score of men 
who are simply non-social. Indeed, if the one man 
have enough love and courage and patience and 
consideration, he may outbalance the whole of a 
negatively minded community, and bring it into 
better things. But whatever the effect of his life 
on others may be, it is quite certain that this effect 
will be at its height as his own individual life is 
human and social and excellent. 

In America, the machinery for a more social 
state already exists. We are in need of no politi- 
cal revolution. Xor could the social state, from 
its very nature, be the result of any outward revo- 
lution. Its coming is an inner process, a growth 
in love and humanity. We have the power, in 
the suffrage, to accomplish all needed reforms, 
just so soon as the reforms have been accomplished 
in our own desires. 

Since the suffrage is so important a social tool, 
it behooves us to guard it with every care, not only 



356 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

its honesty, but also its social quality. We gain 
no excellence through suffrage, if the suffrage is 
not in excellent hands. We are too prone to think 
that the suffrage is a talisman, a dumb wonder- 
worker whose mere presence achieves the miracle. 
The fact that republics, in spite of their partial 
successes, have failed to accomplish the splendid 
programme laid out for them by their founders 
should alone disillusionize us and make us see that 
the hand back of the ballot must be intelligent, 
and must have something more than mere fingers 
and thumb to recommend it. The suffrage is in 
need of keener scrutiny. At the present time it is 
not universal. We exclude all classes thought to 
be disqualified, that is to say, all young persons 
under twenty-one, all foreigners, all insane persons, 
all invalids not able to reach the ballot-box in per- 
son, all persons who have too recently changed their 
residence, and finally, by a great injustice, we ex- 
clude all women in the majority of states, quite re- 
gardless of fitness or unfitness. We have limited 
suffrage rather than universal suffrage. The prin- 
ciple underlying the exclusion is a perfectly sound 
one, — the suffrage may not be claimed by those 
who are not qualified to use it. The difficulty is 
that the line of distinction is not properly drawn. 

Universal suffrage is not intelligent. It is in 
reality most unintelligent, an altogether barbarous 
misapplication of democratic principles. The fact 
that all our men and women and children are the 
agents of the social purpose does not at all imply 



THE AGENTS OF THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 357 

that each one of them is prepared for each and 
every social function. For each function certain 
conditions are required, and the fulfillment of the 
social purpose requires us as causationists to first 
fulfill these conditions. This is all so manifest 
that no illustration is needed. It is precisely the 
same in this matter of the suffrage. Not every 
one is prepared to exercise it, but we must see to 
it that the exclusions and admissions are on just 
grounds. To whom, then, does it properly belong ; 
from whom must it properly be withheld ? 

It belongs evidently to mature participants of the 
social life. It must be withheld evidently from 
all persons who are either immature or are non- 
participants of the social life. 

I think this is a just answer, and that the work- 
ing out of it would give us a just suffrage. Let 
us ask what it is to be mature and participant. 

In the first place participation is not a matter 
of sex. In America, our men are so engrossed 
with business affairs, that our women have been 
repeatedly charged with over-participation in so- 
cial life. The way out would not be the retreat 
of the women, but the advance of the men. In 
any case, the women are a very active and very im- 
portant element in our social life, and to exclude 
them from the suffrage is as unwise as it is unjust. 
Neither is participation a matter of race or color 
or religion. In the second place, participation 
requires the possession of normal mental and phy- 
sical powers. The man adjudged to be insane, and 



358 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

the invalid confined to his room, are hardly in a 
position to guide affairs which they are incapaci- 
tated from sharing. There is something to be said 
in favor of the temporary invalid, and of the man 
laid up for the moment by some accident, and a 
nicer scrutiny will make provision for them. Fur- 
thermore, participation manifestly requires resi- 
dence and a genuine share in current activities. 
And finally and most emphatically, participation 
requires an ability to read and write and speak the 
English language. Without this ability, no man 
or woman, whatever their other qualification, may 
be truly said to take part in our American life. 
They are excluded from its higher activities, they 
have no share in its larger thought, they do not 
come into touch with its representative men and 
women. How real this disqualification is, a man 
must feel, however well educated, who has lived for 
some time in a country whose language he did not 
speak. The sense of social exclusion is absolute 
and appalling. He would be rash indeed to wish 
to vote on any local question. 

To be mature is an equally definite requirement, 
but somewhat more difficult to establish. As be- 
tween the bright child of twelve and many a man 
and woman of thirty, between an alert collegian 
and an illiterate fellow just past his majority, the 
judgment of maturity would often have to be given 
to the cadet ; but since the line must be drawn 
for the present somewhat arbitrarily, it may well 
stand for both sexes at twenty-one. But maturity 



THE AGENTS OF THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 359 

requires more than mere age. It requires, like 
social participation, a sound mental condition and 
at least the elements of education. At the present 
time, when so large a part of human communica- 
tion is by means of the written and printed word, 
a man who does not read cannot be called mature, 
for he has been shut out from the intelligence of 
the world, and has not come under the influence of 
those forces which make, for maturity. To admit 
him to the franchise is most unsuitable and un- 
intelligent. When at the same time we exclude 
intelligent women, we are curiously inconsistent. 

If, then, the suffrage were given to all mature 
participants of the social life, it would be given to 
all men and women over twenty-one years of age, 
irrespective of race or color or religion, provided 
they had normal mental power, and could read, 
write, and speak the English language ; and it would 
be withheld from all persons, regardless of sex and 
nationality, if they could not satisfy these very sim- 
ple and rational requirements. This would enfran- 
chise the majority of women and a few Asiatics ; 
it would disfranchise many negroes and illiterate 
whites, and all ignorant immigrants, Italians, Poles, 
Hungarians, Slavs, who cannot by any stretch of 
the term be said to participate in our present na- 
tional social life. And both of these changes, of 
enfranchisement and disfranchisement, would be 
most salutary, and in direct line with the realiza- 
tion of the social purpose. 

These measures may well be urged, because it is 



360 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

felt that they are just ; but measures which are just 
are found in the long run to be likewise expedient. 
It is too late a day to plead the social usefulness of 
women, for that is quite a foregone conclusion. In 
so many vocations they have proven themselves 
the equals of men, and in some their superiors, 
that the state can no longer afford to lose the in- 
terest and the service of women. It is not only 
unjust to women to exclude them from the suffrage, 
but it is unjust to the best interests of the com- 
munity. Women are not more moral than men. 
Like most protected and semi-protected persons, 
they entertain abstractly a higher moral standard 
than is professed or carried out by men of affairs, 
but this is simply because they have been sub- 
jected less to the stress and strain of life in the 
open. True morality is a product of this larger 
social experience. When women compete with 
men, when they come to put their sentiments to 
the test of action, they do not prove themselves 
more moral. One may not quote the affair of Eve, 
for Adam's subsequent lack of gallantry leaves 
him in the more unfavorable light of the two. 
However, it is in the open that women come them- 
selves into the larger moral life. Their enfran- 
chisement may not be urged under any illusion 
that they would purify the ballot. That will only 
come about when, through education and experi- 
ence, both men and women find that righteousness 
is the only rational and practical scheme of life. 
But this enfranchisement may well be urged, both 



THE AGENTS OF THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 361 

as a matter of delayed justice, and from a belief 
that the state would gain tremendously in all its 
deliberations and activities by adding the interest 
and point of view and service of women to the in- 
terest and point of view and service of men. 

In the same way, the enfranchisement of those 
Orientals who elect America, and who have the 
intelligence and industry to learn the English 
language, would be both just and expedient. It 
need hardly be added that this ingathering would 
not include the crowd of coolies who come here 
simply as temporary workers, and who, in the mat- 
ter of language, essay nothing more serious than 
"pidgin" English. 

Universal suffrage has so long been a shibboleth 
of democracy that any proposition to restrict the 
suffrage by withdrawing it from persons who have 
once enjoyed the right to misuse it is pretty sure 
to meet with a tremendous outcry, and particularly 
from those more intelligent states of the Union 
which are not themselves suffering from the pre- 
sence of a large ignorant vote. Massachusetts is 
shocked that South Carolina does not wish to be 
governed by illiterate negroes, even though Massa- 
chusetts is herself wincing a little bit under the 
pressure of her own increasing Irish vote. But no 
one can go into the black belt of the South, into 
the homes of the " poor whites," into the coal 
mining districts of the Appalachians, into the 
Italian quarters of any metropolis, without feeling 
the keen injustice, the absolute social unwisdom of 



362 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

an ignorant, unqualified voting list. Universal suf- 
frage is unsound in theory, quite as unsound as it 
would be for a father and mother with half a dozen 
children to conduct their family affairs by popular 
vote ; and it is disastrous in practice. The social 
purpose in America cannot be furthered by persons 
who have no conception, and can have none, of what 
that purpose is. 

The argument for a restricted suffrage does not 
at all invalidate the statement that each man and 
each woman and each child is an agent of the 
social purpose, an agent in whom and through 
whom the social purpose is to be accomplished. 
Each child fulfills the social purpose by growing 
strong and beautiful and accomplished and good 
under the influence of those forces which an en- 
lightened adult world brings to bear upon child- 
life. Each ignorant adult fulfills the social pur- 
pose, not by going and voting, and so imposing his 
own ignorance and half view of life upon the des- 
tiny of the community, but by going to work and 
learning to read and write and speak the language 
of the community, and by otherwise cultivating 
those qualities which will enable him to participate 
in its social life. And, finally, an educated adult, 
a qualified voter, fulfills the social purpose by first 
idealizing and perfecting his own individual life in 
every way in his power, and then by endeavoring, 
through a right use of the suffrage and other social 
influences, to establish those educational, esthetic, 
and industrial conditions which best minister to 



THE AGENTS OF THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 363 

the perfecting of social life and the increase of 
human wealth. Universal adult suffrage should 
be the goal of every intelligent community ; but it 
must be reached, not by the enfranchisement of the 
disqualified, but by the qualifying of the disfran- 
chised. If the social instinct were developed in 
the qualified voters of America, this individual 
human betterment would be the supreme object of 
their effort, rather than private profit and privi- 
lege. But it is quite hopeless to expect any great 
change of view on the part of older people. When 
Harvey demonstrated the circulation of the blood, 
it is said that not a single physician in England 
over forty years of age accepted the new view. It 
was the same with evolution. It has been the same 
with nearly every advance movement. The later 
years of life seem chiefly useful in working out and 
perfecting the impulses of earlier days. The con- 
tagion of new ideas is a matter for younger blood. 
The conception of a social state, working with all 
singleness of purpose and with a quite religious 
devotion for the increase of personal integrity and 
worth, the increase of human wealth, the unfolding 
and perfecting of the spirit, is not a conception 
which readily displaces the old-established passion 
for getting ahead. The conception of the social 
state must grow up with another generation. 

Education, that practical process by which we 
realize the social purpose, has then a double work 
to perform. It is to carry out the social purpose 
in the present children and youth, men and women 



364 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

of the race, and at the same time it is to cultivate 
to the utmost that social instinct which will make 
each succeeding generation more devoted and more 
efficient agents of the social purpose. But a stream 
cannot rise above its source. This cultivation of 
the social instinct can only be accomplished if the 
teachers, the official agents of the social purpose, 
have this clearly defined point of view and the 
power of engrafting it. And all this brings us 
back to our starting point, to that initial argument 
of the first chapter, that a teacher is ill qualified 
for either half of his task, however profound his 
knowledge of language or mathematics or science, 
if he have not along with this technical equipment 
that far more important human equipment, a clear, 
practical philosophy of life, and causational meth- 
ods of applying his philosophy. 

In the lower schools at the present time, the 
teachers are commonly women, and this is good or 
bad according to the personality of the particular 
woman. It is good if the personality be large, if 
the woman be of such age and experience that she 
is able and willing to deal with the details of child- 
hood, and if she is deterred by no false modesty 
from dealing with the bodily as well as the intel- 
lectual needs. If she be herself a mother and 
could spare the time for this public service, it would 
add immensely to her equipment, for it would add 
both the experience and the heart of motherhood. 
But the plan of women teachers is exceedingly 
bad, and especially for sturdy, growing, virile boys, 



THE AGENTS OF THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 365 

if the women be inexperienced young girls, fresh 
from college or normal school, and quite unwilling 
and unable to deal with the vital, bodily side of 
life. From the point of view of those of us who 
believe in the unity of man, and in organic educa- 
tion, it is quite absurd and unreasonable to intrust 
the education of a boy to a teacher who would be 
entirely shocked even to look upon the beautiful 
organism which she is supposed to be developing, 
and who is prevented by instinct from dealing with 
the boy in any thoroughgoing, effective way. Edu- 
cation, as I have been trying to present it, has to 
do with the body and all of its impulses and its 
life, as well as with the intellect and the heart ; and 
only those are prepared to undertake the work who 
are prepared to deal with the body and the intellect 
and the heart. The inexperienced young girls who 
fail in this work are much less to blame than the 
older persons who impose so strange a task. And 
that they do fail, I think every head-master who 
has received boys from their hands would be obliged 
to bear witness. 

And yet it is highly desirable to have women 
teachers for boys as well as for girls, desirable so 
that the boys may come at all stages of their lives 
under the influence of good women, and may have 
the benefit of their wisdom and point of view. 
But it seems to me equally desirable that girls shall 
be always in touch with good, strong men. The 
way out is very simple. It is to have both men 
and women teachers even in the lower schools ; an 



366 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

elder woman to deal with the younger children, 
tenderly but effectively, and with that matronly 
modesty which is not appalled by a naked child and 
his healthy appetites ; a man, strong and gentle, to 
give the sloyd and some other sides of the work. Co- 
education can best be carried on by a coeducational 
teaching force, and coeducation, in spite of its dif- 
ficulties and occasional disadvantages, still seems 
to me a necessary condition of that nobler, freer 
life which is the goal of enlightened democracy. 
Society is made up of boy-babies and girl-babies, 
of boys and girls, of youths and maidens, of men 
and women, and is vastly more interesting by rea- 
son of such a constitution. To perfect society is 
to perfect this human interplay and to bring about 
a more ideal comradeship all along the line, from 
the nursery onward. 

At the high school and university it is even 
more important for the carrying out of the social 
purpose that the teaching body should include both 
men and women. At the high school, the question 
of sex is coming slowly into consciousness ; at the 
university, it reaches an impulsive and uninstructed 
flood. Wise men are needed in the gymnasium to 
guide and strengthen the boys and men ; wise 
women are needed to serve the girls and women. 
Both instructors must deal with the question fear- 
lessly and effectively, both to prepare for wise 
parenthood and to guard from evil. But in other 
lines of instruction, the best results come from 
utilizing the wisdom and experience of both men 



THE AGENTS OF THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 367 

and women for both boys and girls, men and 
women. And always the mission of the teacher is 
the double one of realizing the social purpose in 
the persons of his immediate students, and of 
cultivating that conception of a social state which 
shall make for the increased human wealth of all, 
of a state which shall resolutely seek the well-being 
of each and every citizen, his strength and beauty 
and accomplishment and goodness. 

But we should be ill serving our ideal in this 
work of official education, if the process is not 
made, with equal thoroughness, to serve its own 
agents, the teachers, and to help on the perfecting of 
their own lives. A teacher who sacrifices himself, 
a process which sacrifices its own agents, is already 
self -defeated. It is altogether as important that the 
school and academy and university shall bring daily 
inspiration and help to the teacher as to the child 
and youth and man. And this falls in excellently 
with our theory of the experimental life. If one 
bring good health and high spirit to the adventure, 
it is a sweet delight to teach ; to meet each day 
affectionate children, inquiring youth, spirit-hungry 
men and women, to make one's own knowledge 
clear and accurate in trying to present it to others, 
to gain the helpful reaction of mind against mind. 
But one must bring to the work certain qualifi- 
cations not only in the way of direct preparation, 
but also in the way of experience in the great open 
of life. And then there comes a time when this 
work is no longer good for the teacher. He has 



368 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

given his best to the work and he has got the best 
out of the work. To be at once and always a 
teacher is a very poor plan of life. It is much 
better to regard the teaching as a contribution and 
a discipline, and then to pass on. When one has 
made the contribution and reaped the discipline, 
one is bound, by the requirements of the experi- 
mental life, to seek a larger personal reaction and 
a theatre for greater social service. In doing this, 
a man does not turn his back upon old interests 
and pursuits. He simply broadens and extends 
them. As an investigator, as a writer, as an artist, 
he carries his branch one or many steps further and 
touches a larger audience. As a public-minded 
householder, as a statesman, he may bring his 
ripened powers to the service of a still larger 
destiny. To keep its agents vital, to call them 
when qualified, to part company with them when 
they are needed elsewhere, is a most important part 
of the duty of official education, and apparently 
most difficult. I am emphasizing this need so 
strongly because on all sides, and especially in our 
public schools, one sees feeble, dispirited teaching 
and worn-out, discouraged teachers. One cannot 
communicate what one has not got, and it is abun- 
dant, beautiful, glorious life that we want. 

With the progress of this conception of the so- 
cial state, formal education for all children of the 
state will cover the first twenty-two, or even the 
first twenty-five years of life. After that ought to 
follow a full half century of splendid self-directed 



THE AGENTS OF THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 369 

activity, to be followed by the twilight peace of 
wise counsels and old age. This half century of 
maturity is the time for playing out the full drama 
of life, for realizing the social purpose in all its 
height and depth and breadth. It is now that a 
man establishes his home, begets his children, finds 
his varying and progressive life-work, touches the 
destiny of his age. The heart beats high, the eye 
flashes, the cheek inflames, the blood goes riotously 
through the veins ; for now it is that a man knows 
that he is the regent of an eternal God, the agent 
of a superb purpose, the knight and soldier of good 
fortune. God help him if he is less than this, for 
he has missed the full measure of a life. 

It is the high mission of education to beget in 
all of us this avariciousness of the best. School 
and home alike fail if they do not impart, along 
with a magnificent organism, a full appetite for the 
splendor of life. If the educational process has 
been wise, there has been from the lower school 
onward a gradual abdication of authority on the 
part of both teacher and parent, an increasing in- 
sistence upon self -activity and self -direction. When 
these young people come to face the larger respon- 
sibility of mature life, they come prepared. If 
they bring a distinct plan of life, they come addi- 
tionally well armed. As Whewell quaintly says, 
" Rightly to propose a problem is no inconsidera- 
ble step towards its solution." In this larger life- 
drama, the functions of thinker and doer may not 
be separated. The specialization and division of 



370 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

labor have been carried much too far. It is not 
true, that fiction which the vagarists would have 
us believe, that by taking ten fragments of men 
and piecing them together, you produce a tenfold 
giant. On the contrary, you produce something 
distinctly less than a whole man, for each fragment 
lacks soundness and integrity. In the domain of 
art, the divorce of artist and artisan has crippled 
both. The masters of the Renaissance were work- 
men, many of them clever artificers in gold and sil- 
ver ; many of them direct wielders of the chisel ; 
many of them architects and engineers as well as 
artists ; many of them musicians, not a few of them 
poets. The versatility of Leonardo and Michel- 
angelo was not so much a product of their genius 
as a condition of it. The effect of separating the 
artist and artisan, and of robbing art-work of the 
joyous art-spirit, has been to produce work which 
William Morris so strongly characterized as being 
either stark utilitarianism or idiotic sham. The 
artist, separated from the material which he is in- 
directly to fashion, produces designs which are tor- 
tured and grotesque, — ■ essentially inartistic. The 
artisan, deprived of the art-spirit, turns out work 
devoid of feeling and subtlety. The truth of this 
contention finds one long illustration in the history 
of art. And not only is it true in the graphic arts, 
in sculpture, and in painting, but also in music and 
in literature. The great composers have been mas- 
ter musicians. The great writers have been men 
of action, — Thucydides, the soldier ; Dante, the 



THE AGENTS OF THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 371 

patriot ; Shakespeare, the actor ; Goethe, the states- 
man. Everything vital in representation has been 
first rehearsed in action, just as everything vital in 
action has been first rehearsed in thought and feel- 
ing. It is a unit world, and truth hides itself unless 
sought for in its totality. 

It is the same in education and in life. One 
man may not do the thinking and another man 
the work, and have the thinking and the work 
sound. The closet philosopher, out of touch with 
life, himself not a teacher, perhaps not even a 
father, cannot be counted a very safe guide in so 
eminently human and social a process as education. 
The truth is not reached in that way. The leader, 
the teacher, must be in the midst of men, a worker 
among workers, a direct observer of the life which 
he seeks to know and guide and redeem. The 
greatest of human teachers, the men whose teach- 
ing has been so transcendent that it has become 
the foundation of a religious cult, have moved in 
and out among the people, and so much truth as 
they have given to men has been discovered, not 
invented. 

If the thinker, to be sound, must also be a doer, 
it is quite as imperative that the doer shall also be 
a thinker. There is no disaster so overwhelming 
and complete as when a spiritual plan falls into 
the hands of unspiritual agents and they proceed 
to the impossible task of carrying it out. Nothing 
has done so much to discredit the newer forms of 
education, the kindergarten, manual training, and 



372 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

science teaching, as the lack of genuine qualifica- 
tion on the part of its agents. It is necessary to 
fight shy of doctrinaires everywhere, not only among 
the closet philosophers, but even more among the 
so-called " practical " people. One who is in the 
world of affairs runs against many theorists, from 
the mild elderly woman, who " goes in for the lost 
tribes," to the rampant egotist, who is for giving 
his own twist of thought to all things thinkable. 
The name of these theorists is legion. The smaller 
and more inadequate the initial experience, the 
more stupendous the theory and the more insistent 
the claim of being practical. 

To avoid these pitfalls and render genuine so- 
cial service, one is bound to seek the more complete 
view of life which results from enlarged thinking 
and diversified activity, quite as one is bound by 
the requirements of the experimental life to do it 
for the health of one's own spirit. There is no 
antagonism between the social and the individual 
requirements. As the number of experimentalists 
increases, and society becomes permeated with per- 
sons bent on human wealth, the conditions favor- 
able for the attainment of this good fortune will 
be increasingly current. But individuals working 
together for a common purpose constitute a state, 
and as they themselves become more social and 
more cooperative, the state which represents their 
joint sentiment and activity becomes more social 
and cooperative. 

It is in this silent, almost imperceptible way that 



THE AGENTS OF THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 373 

the social state is born, not by outward revolution, 
not by class warfare, not by each man's waiting for 
his neighbor to be good, but by this more subtle 
change in individual sentiment and practice. 

Few sentiments affect the welfare of masses of 
men so intimately and so profoundly as the concep- 
tion they entertain of the function of the state ; 
for the state, as the expression of the corporate 
will, becomes by far the most important and most 
powerful agent of the social purpose. The history 
of the state is a history of men's changing senti- 
ment in regard to human relations and social op- 
portunity. The conception of the social state which 
is now emerging has been a slow evolution, and 
marks a tremendous advance in civilization. The 
change has been from a negative to a positive con- 
ception. As the institute of justice, the state was 
supposed to concern itself solely with maintaining 
the freedom of its citizens. And this duty was 
believed to be discharged by the negative process of 
preventing aggression, — either foreign aggression, 
as against the nation ; or internal aggression, in- 
dividual against individual. The state was the cor- 
porate policeman, and its one motto was "Hands 
off ! " This primitive conception did good service 
in its day, for, beside resisting foreign invasion, it 
substituted a public tribunal, with impartial stan- 
dards of justice, for the broad hazard of personal 
revenge. And this was a great gain which has 
not yet come to perfection. But as men wrought 
out such partial freedom as they might, there came 



374 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

a growing perception that the full measure of free- 
dom does not result from this negative letting- 
alone. Place a man naked and unarmed in the 
midst of a most bountiful nature, and though he is 
nominally free, he is in reality the most pitiable 
of prisoners, the slave of daily want, of danger, of 
fear, of lack of opportunity. His freedom is the 
veriest mirage. So, too, the citizen of a state 
which merely protects him from physical violence 
enjoys a very shadowy sort of freedom indeed, and 
especially if the bounty of nature has long since 
been appropriated by earlier comers. One may 
still study this particular variety of freedom in 
many corners of America. But with a larger ex- 
perience of life, and the intelligence which grows 
out of experience, there comes a more positive con- 
ception of freedom. It is seen to consist not in 
letting a man alone, for that freedom turns out to 
be an illusion, but in surrounding him with oppor- 
tunities and facilities for the full play of his in- 
dividuality, the effective working out of his life 
purposes. With this changed conception of free- 
dom there comes a changed conception of the func- 
tion of the state. As the instrument of freedom 
the state must play a more positive role in the 
affairs of men. The function is more than one of 
mere bodily protection, it is the function of en- 
larged opportunity. It is the experience of men 
everywhere that by association they can accom- 
plish ends which are quite impossible to the solitary 
worker. The more just and complete the coopera- 



THE AGENTS OF THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 375 

tion the more beneficent the results. The state, 
being the institute of justice, and being by its na- 
ture all inclusive, represents the most perfect form 
of cooperation possible. The large undertakings 
now successfully carried out by private corpora- 
tions can be still more successfully carried out by 
the state ; for the private corporation, being bent 
on profits, naturally takes the ground that any- 
thing is good enough which the public will accept, 
and no price too high that the public will pay ; 
while the state, being free from this necessity, and 
able to borrow money at nominal interest, may 
take the more ideal ground that nothing is good 
enough which is short of the very best. All of 
the tremendous arguments which may be urged 
for association as a general principle of conduct 
may be urged with heightened force in favor of 
that more complete and perfect form of associa- 
tion represented by the state. 

And to this broader and more helpful conception 
of the state we are steadily advancing. One by 
one the state has been taking over functions and 
duties once vehemently denied to it, but now amply 
justified as helping to free men from4he tyranny of 
things. Lighthouses have been built and manned ; 
waterways improved; maps and charts prepared. 
Cities have been paved and lighted and drained ; 
water has been regarded as a public necessity. 
Water power and natural gas for manufacturing 
purposes have been made available. Tram lines 
have been taken over or built ; municipal tenements 



376 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

have been erected ; free libraries and public baths 
and gymnasiums have been established. In order 
to facilitate communication of thought and spread 
intelligence, a post-office system has been inaugu- 
rated, which, in point of efficiency and in volume of 
business transacted, rivals the most gigantic of our 
modern gigantic enterprises. In some countries, and 
notably in those where the service in this respect is 
the best and cheapest for the people at large, both 
telegraphs and railways have been taken over by 
the state. Boards of health have been established ; 
quarantine has been inaugurated ; currency has been 
provided. Best of all, in every country marked by 
any degree of intelligence and prosperity, an elabo- 
rate system of public education has come to be re- 
garded as a public necessity, — schoolhouses have 
been built by the thousand, colleges and universi- 
ties by tlie hundred, investigations have been car- 
ried on, publications issued, expeditions fitted out. 
This list, long as it is, does not by any means ex- 
haust the present directions of state activity. And 
from none of these multitudinous functions would 
any but a very small body of reactionaries have the 
state withdraw. There is no turning back in this 
work of increasing the freedom of the individual 
by diminishing the tyranny of things. 

A function once taken over meets with so lit- 
tle opposition, because it is recognized that by no 
private agency could the work be so efficiently 
accomplished. No one would seriously propose to 
give over the post-office or abandon public educa- 



THE AGENTS OF THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 377 

tion. That both of these services can be vastly 
improved quite goes without saying, but the point 
is that they are nevertheless far more efficient than 
they would be in private hands. In view of this 
very favorable experience, and the sound theory 
underlying it, we should be passing at once to the 
complete application of association and cooperation 
by having the state take over all of our public utili- 
ties, were it not for the dominance of that particu- 
lar form of the unsocial spirit known as commer- 
cialism. A considerable body of our professedly 
democratic people still like to exploit their neigh- 
bors. This spirit of greed is the most formidable 
enemy of the social purpose, for it is forever setting 
up toll-gates on the path to better things. It hin- 
ders the realization of the social state in precisely 
the same way that the vendetta, the spirit of pri- 
vate revenge, of over-requital, hinders the adminis- 
tration of justice. It is a spirit which the socially- 
minded person, the experimentalist, is bound to 
fight to the death. 

Rampant as the spirit of commercialism now is, 
I cannot but regard its manifestation as the last 
upnaming of the fire before it goes out. The fail- 
ure of commercialism, ninety-seven per cent., I be- 
lieve, of those who pin their faith to it, and the 
scant happiness of the three per cent, who succeed, 
are adding very telling arguments to the testimony 
of the experimentalists that the other way is better. 
Commercialism has its apologists, very honest folk 
no doubt, but their arguments have a strange 



378 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

sound. It is hard to believe that a railroad worked 
to pay high interest on bonds, large dividends on 
watered stock, princely salaries to the upper admin- 
istration, and bent on developing certain localities 
where its directors have property at the expense of 
certain other localities where they have none, — it 
is hard to believe that such a railroad can serve 
the public better than a railroad run on the same 
principles as the post-office. It is hard to believe 
that it is better socially to have a dozen families 
huddled into one tenement house and the large lot 
next door stand idle, waiting for a higher price. It 
is hard to believe in the wisdom of an economic 
regime under which scarcity and want are the result 
of an overproduction of necessary commodities. It 
is hard to believe that human wealth is increased 
and the social purpose furthered by committing the 
natural resources of a country, the gold and silver, 
copper and iron, coal and oil, field and forest, into 
the private keeping of a few individuals instead of 
administering this bounty for the good of all. 

This and much else of our current commercial 
doctrine is excessively hard to believe, so hard, in- 
deed, that after a time one gives up the attempt. 

But the social spirit is deepening and spreading. 
The full programme of the social state means the 
nationalizing of land and of all industries which 
minister to the necessities of decent human living ; 
that is, it means the taking over of public and 
necessary utilities. The carrying out of the social 
purpose requires that a man shall have adequate 



THE AGENTS OF THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 379 

food and shelter and clothing, air and water, light 
and heat, education and amusement, beauty and 
social opportunity. And further, it requires that 
the necessary material part of his life shall be won 
at the least possible expenditure of labor and time, 
so that the necessary spiritual part of life may 
have sufficient energy and leisure for its realization. 
No state, however ideal, can do away with the 
necessity of daily human toil ; but it can idealize 
the conditions of toil, can make it a source of 
health and pleasure, and it can limit the amount 
and time to wholesome bounds. In England and 
America, we are fighting for the eight-hour day of 
work. It would be a fine thing if we could realize 
it, but it would be still finer if we could make it 
four hours, and we could if we wanted to. The 
whole idea of the social state is to further the 
freedom and opportunity of the individual life, 
and so make possible the increase of human wealth. 
The social state is the instrument of individualism, 
not its opponent. The social state limits individu- 
alism in only one way ; — it denies the right of the 
individual to exploit his neighbor, even as justice 
denies the vendetta in taking over punishment from 
the hands of private vengeance and making it a 
state function. But it is easy to see that this ap- 
parent limitation of individualism is in reality a 
most practical and effective furtherance of indi- 
vidualism. By preventing individual aggression, 
the state protects the individual against aggres- 
sion ; by making the general conditions of life sweet 



380 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

and wholesome, the state makes it increasingly pos- 
sible for the individual to make his own life sweet 
and wholesome ; by making the neighbor intelli- 
gent and self-respecting, the state helps the indi- 
vidual to idealize his own life. Edifying as it 
would be for us all to turn home missionaries, it 
seems to me an absurd mistake to picture the social 
state as the instrument of such missionary effort. 
What is good for the neighbor is likewise good for 
me. It is the neighbor who forms the environment 
and who reacts in a thousand ways upon the daily 
life of the individual. If the social state is the 
highest form of altruism, it is also the most accom- 
plished and successful form of selfishness. One 
man is just a single individual, but he is neighbor 
to thousands. 

Nor is it true that when the social state, through 
association and cooperation, reduces the bread-and- 
butter problem to a minimum, to its proper place, 
it will rob a man of wholesome initiative and enter- 
prise. The same argument might have been used 
against the suppression of the robber barons of 
the Middle Ages, or the Algerian pirates in the 
early days of the republic. The social state is not 
an entity outside the hearts of men, alternately 
coaxing and browbeating them. It is an expres- 
sion of so much of the individual will as is common 
to all or to a majority of the community. The 
social state would mean, not that men had lost 
initiative and enterprise, but rather that they pre- 
ferred to spend their initiative and enterprise in 



THE AGENTS OF THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 381 

better and more social ways than .by exploiting 
their neighbors, preferred to spend this force in 
the more interesting and delightful occupation of 
perfecting the self and realizing some of the mag- 
nificent possibilities of the present moment. To 
give over the quest of profit and the Shylock view 
of life generally is not to give over initiative and 
enterprise. The experimentalists have given over 
profit, but I have painted them ill if I have not 
shown them to be a more daring and picturesque 
band of adventurers than ever went in search of 
the golden fleece. Every increase in strength, in 
beauty, in accomplishment, in goodness, brought 
about by the betterment of the life conditions 
through the amelioration and idealizing of daily 
toil, means increased power to use this lengthening 
leisure to advantage. One need not make personal 
trial of the shop-keeping and book-keeping and 
time-keeping and the various other forms of hold- 
ing tight by which men waste and lose their lives, 
to see that on the very face of it such occupations 
are infinitely less worth while than art and sci- 
ence and letters, investigation and travel, religion 
and music, love and comradeship, field and forest, 
sunshine and fresh air, even than swimming and 
boat-racing and tennis. The old remark that a 
man can be doing many worse things than making 
money is a very cheap and nasty disposition of the 
august possibilities of a human life. When we 
realize the social state and so reduce <the bread-and- 
butter toil to a minimum, we shall have time for this 



382 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

more moral and esthetic side of occupation. There 
is infinite opportunity for initiative and enterprise 
in the use of leisure. The carpentry of Jesus un- 
doubtedly served him and that limited number of 
persons who received of his good handiwork, but 
the beautiful ministry of his life came from his in- 
dustrial leisure. The fishing of his disciples was 
certainly useful, but their world-service flowed out 
of the time they stole from their fishing, a service 
quite in excess of that of all the subsequent com- 
mercial enterprise of their fellow-countrymen. It 
is out of the serenity and non-compulsion of indus- 
trial leisure that the great and good things of life 
have come. We are great cowards if we believe 
that the masses of our people, kept in health by a 
wholesome amount of daily toil, and once more erect 
and alert with self-respect, are going to squander a 
leisure to which they bring good health and high 
spirit and a social heart. Each one of them is an 
agent of the social purpose, and has his individual, 
non-industrial work to do. 

Just as the state internally is passing from the 
negative function of the policeman to the positive 
function of opportunity, it is beginning to show 
the signs of a similar transformation in its foreign 
relations. Even warfare is conducted according to 
an international code, by which the nations who 
are spectators to the brutality try to see at least 
that the game is played fair. The prevention and 
punishment of crime are furthered by treaties of 
extradition. Both of these provisions belong to 



THE AGENTS OF THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 383 

the negative side of things, but they are fore- 
runners of more positive movements, for they 
recognize a community of human interest which is 
more than national. For the past quarter of a 
century we have had an international postal union, 
which has been a world-wide public service. In 
the metric system we have a partially successful 
attempt at international weights and measures. 
Doubtless, we shall some time have an international 
currency, saving Great Britain and her colonies 
the extra clerk hire now made necessary by her 
non-decimal system, and saving all nationalities a 
great amount of inconvenience and useless labor. 
We have the Red Cross Association, recognizing 
in suffering no nationality. We have peace con- 
ferences, and international congresses of arts and 
sciences and letters and religion. These agencies 
do not yet outbalance the tremendous, brutal, 
wasteful armament of Europe, but they have the 
future on their side. Every one of these inter- 
national bonds is of great value, not only as a 
humanity and a convenience, but as the beginning of 
that more complete internationalism, the federation 
of the nations, which is our manifest world-destin}^, 
unless the solar fires go out more quickly than wis- 
dom and brotherhood ripen in the hearts of men. 

It seems to me, then, the manifest duty of a 
socially-minded man, of a man who recognizes 
himself as an agent of the social purpose, to op- 
pose most strenuously an established army and 
navy, all foreign alliances which may involve either 



384 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

war or unfriendliness, to oppose the exclusion of 
men or merchandise, and to throw the whole 
weight of his influence on the side of a world-wide 
reciprocity and free trade and comradeship. At 
no time and at no place could the experiment of 
an absolutely open-minded, friendly nation be in- 
augurated with so much hope of success as just 
now and just here in America. In all the world, 
the vantage ground is ours. We can make of 
America a self-contained plutocracy, exclusive, un- 
friendly, powerful enough and isolated enough to 
ignore the world-problem ; or we can make a social 
democracy, with open door and helping hand, rich 
in the human wealth of our own national life, and 
rich in the friendly comradeship which binds us to 
every nation on the earth and binds them to us. 
The role we play will depend solely upon the ideas 
which we bring to the adventure, and these ideas 
are the product of the education which we get out 
of the joint process of the school and life. 

It is impossible to divorce education from reli- 
gion and have education remain sincere. And it 
is equally impossible to divorce it from political 
thought. For both religion and political thought 
are the expression of the deepest part of a man's 
nature, of his philosophy of life, and the educa- 
tional process which is to realize this philosophy 
must take cognizance of its concrete expression. 
In attempting to deepen the social instincts of our 
children and young people, and to make them the 
conscious agents of the social purpose, education 



THE AGENTS OF THE SOCIAL PURPOSE 385 

must also instruct them in those practical political 
methods by which the social purpose may be real- 
ized. The experimental life is very jealous of its 
time, sets indeed a surpassingly high value upon 
life and its opportunity ; and it would be contrary 
to the fundamental maxims of this experimental 
life either to entertain idle sentiments which can- 
not be realized in action, or to spend itself on 
methods and operations which are not causational 
and effective. Government is the expression of 
political thought, its practical method and opera- 
tion. A man bent on the accomplishment of the 
social purpose must acquaint himself with the 
machinery and detail of government, not only to 
exercise the suffrage intelligently and helpfully, 
but also that he may be the better able to lend 
a hand when his own turn for political service 
comes. One must be willing to serve on juries, to 
act on boards and committees, even if need be to 
hold public office. One need not do this always, 
or even for any great length of time, for that would 
be to wreck one's own life and make one less capa- 
ble of wise and efficient service, but one must be 
willing to do one's share ; and out of this temperate 
public work, the experimentalist may gain an expe- 
rience as valuable individually as the service was of 
worth publicly. It is entirely possible and practi- 
cable for the state to directly further the living of 
the experimental life. The increase of state func- 
tion, and the idealizing of daily toil, will ultimately 
bring every citizen into that cooperative self- 



386 EDUCATION AND LIFE 

employment represented by the public service, and 
this service may be made to offer just that succes- 
sion of occupations needful to the experimentalist 
and needful also for the best rendering of the ser- 
vice itself. If in addition we inaugurated an hon- 
orable pension, not only for old age, for persons 
of seventy-five and upwards, but also for childhood 
and youth, for persons under twenty-five, we should 
be realizing the conditions of a large individual 
freedom to which each one might contribute, and in 
which each one might share. This freedom from 
bodily want, this temperate daily toil, this abun- 
dance of leisure, are necessary to the study and 
pursuit of perfection, that is, to the attainment of 
culture. And education, to be a culture process, 
to be the efficient process of the philosophic idea, 
must concern itself in a very practical and causa- 
tional way with the establishment of these requisite 
conditions. 

To be a conscious agent of the social purpose is 
to impart to one's own life a large measure of 
reality and charm. The possession of a strong and 
beautiful and accomplished and worthy self is one 
half of the endeavor. The other half is to further 
this same human wealth in the neighbor. One 
becomes a member of that increasing company of 
people who would join in the " Song of the Open 
Road : " — 

" Henceforth I ask not good fortune, 
I, myself, am good fortune." 



Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton <&•» Co. 
Cambridge, Mass., U.S. A. 



APR 4- 1902 



APR 4 1902 



